“Mikey . . .
” I start to say something, but know I don’t need to finish it. He knows what I’m going to say and he shrugs.
“There
’s an old field we can cross. It’s a ten-minute run, you up to that?” he says, though we both know I have no choice. If that’s where the truck is, then that’s where we have to go. Mikey glances nervously behind us as groans echo around. “Shit, they were all supposed to go inside. I left the gate open for long enough.” He takes my hand, his deep brown eyes looking into mine. “We need to run.”
He pulls me from
the tree line without another word, and we start to run. The ground is slippy underneath us, drenched through from the weeks of rain. Emily and Alek are ahead of us, running hand in hand without looking back. I, however, am clearly an idiot, because I do look back, and what I see scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I stumble as I gasp. Deaders are bursting from the tree line, and beyond them I can definitely hear a truck, which means the Forgotten.
“Shit!” I hear Mikey say from behind me.
I hadn’t realized that I had let go of his hand; I hadn’t realized that I was still jogging forward while he had stopped completely. I swallow back my fear as Mikey’s eyes meet mine.
“RUN, NINA!” Mikey
roars out, sounding far away against the rampant beating of my heart.
And like that m
y feet pound through the wet soil of someone’s lawn as we run through the front gate and around the side of the house. The overgrown grass sticks to my calves and makes me stumble and trip, but I continue to run nonetheless. I’m not stopping for anything—not with fifty or so deaders closing in and the fucking Forgotten chasing our asses down. Run? Please, I’m fucking sprinting at ninety miles an hour. I’m like a goddamned gazelle on the run from its predator.
Wait, doesn’t the prey always get caught? Shit.
I chance a glance over my right shoulder, checking that Mikey is close behind. My heart skips a beat when my eyes don
’t immediately land on him, and I slow down and start to turn, until he grips my shoulder and drags me forward as he comes up on my left.
“I said run, woman!” h
e yells into my face, and continues to drag me along.
I shrug him off, but don
’t have time to tell him to go fuck himself for screaming in my face like an old fishmonger’s wife. The smell of the dead makes me retch, and the gunshots from the Forgotten make my blood run cold. I’ll write a mental I.O.U. to kick his ass for screaming in my face—if we make it out of this alive, that is.
The fence at the back of the little yard has collapsed, giving us an easy
way out and through the other side into yet another fucking soggy, overgrown field. My breath is ragged and dry in my throat, making me feel like I’ve swallowed some crushed glass. Every time I gulp, another shard digs in and causes me to cough. We stumble and slide down the side of the embankment, both of us gasping as we slip into the freezing shallow river at the bottom. I’m sure at one point this house was Grade A real estate with its own land and a river running past it, but right now it’s a survivor’s nightmare.
We begin to wade across, lifting our arms above our heads to keep as
much of us out of the ice-cold water as possible, my Doc Martens thankfully giving me a firm footing on the rocks. We half-climb, half-drag ourselves up and out the other side, my fingers clinging to the thick, wet mud and roots to get some leverage. I grip on tighter, my fingers blue with the cold, and as I lose my grip and begin to slip, Mikey’s hand shoots down and grabs my wrist, heaving me up the other side.
I nod a thanks
and then I’m back on my feet and we’re running again, with the sound of zombies falling into the water behind us. The empty field and the houses in the distance spur us both on, and I grab Mikey’s hand as we push harder, willing our legs to run faster and our muscles not to cramp. To cramp up now could mean death for both of us; by deader or by gun, death will be a long, drawn out, painful experience. Fuck that.
With deaders in the surrounding field getting closer, the scene plays out in slow motion when I trip and fall to my knees, mud splattering up around me. Mikey turns and grips me under the arms, dragging me back up to standing.
My eyes bug out when a gray arm reaches up out of the mud and grabs at his ankle. “Mikey!” I scream.
He kicks away from the deader
’s reach and swings down with his fist, narrowly missing its rotten mouth, which is snapping at his leg, and hitting it hard across its skull with his fist. Its head whips backwards upon impact before the deader quickly rights itself and fixes its cloudy gaze upon me. It stretches a rotten hand across to me as it slowly pulls itself free of the mud and grass, growling and gnashing its teeth. Mikey’s foot stamps down on its arm, cracking the bone in two; however, the ligament hangs by the bloated and stretched skin. The deader pays the broken limb no attention, but continues to drag is decomposing body toward me. Mikey grabs it from behind and drags it backwards. It thrashes around, growling in anger in an attempt to get to me, until Mikey falls on his ass. I grab the nearest thing to me—a heavy rock—and with difficulty, I launch it at the thing’s face.
It crushes into the brittle bones, making an almost concave shape where
the deader’s features should be and releasing a toxic stench that I can taste in my mouth. It stops moving instantly and collapses into the gore-soaked earth around it. I look at Mikey as he holds a hand out to me.
“Come on, baby. We need to go.”
My shaky hand takes his, and I climb back to my feet and together we run.
*
We walk for a long time when we get across the field and into the burnt-out shell of a town, but strangely I don’t tire; freedom runs through my limbs and I feel like I could run a marathon right now. The chill in the air keeps my senses alert, but it’s Emily’s hand in mine that gives me the greatest comfort. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed a friendly touch until she takes my hand in hers. Lucky for us, the Forgotten got stuck in the mud halfway across the field, and by the time they realized that they would have to get out and chase us on foot, they were surrounded by deaders and we were too far ahead.
We come out the other side of the town and keep on walking down a dusty highway. A
bout a quarter of a mile later, we head down a small embankment and come to a gathering of trees. Mikey tells us to hold back for a minute and jogs on ahead. I hear a scuffle, but by the time we get there he’s taken care of the two deaders that were surrounding the small green car. We climb inside, with me taking a minute to look down upon the rotten deaders at my feet.
Some things change
and some things don’t. My feelings toward Mikey have changed—adapted, almost. Emily has grown from a young girl to a woman. She’s tough, and I feel confident that she could survive this nightmare without me by her side. But the deaders…shit, the deaders are still the same: dirty, rotten, mutilated walking corpses. They still smell, they still want to feed, and for some inexplicable reason, they are still up and walking around like it’s the perfectly normal thing to do when you die.
I take a de
ep breath as I close the door of the car and wonder if there will ever be an end to their reign.
Mikey drives like a demon, ninety miles an hour down a dusty highway barren of life—and death, which makes a nice change. Nature still flourishes around us in its sick attempt to brighten the mood, but with winter on the way, soon even that small comfort will be abolished and then nothing will help with the blues.
No one talks. W
hat’s there to say? For Mikey, he’s escaped the Forgotten’s clutches once again—bravo to him, but for how long this time? And if they do catch him again, will he be so lucky?
Me? I know that if they catch me,
I’m a dead woman. I have no idea why I’m not now. Truth be told, I have no idea how I’m still alive, or why I haven’t gone insane after what’s happened to me. But just like anything else, I’ve hardened and adapted to the world around me. A piece of me was taken, beaten into submission by domineering hands, but in its place is a new part of me. A harder, meaner part of me.
The car pulls over to the side of the road, and I
’m dragged from my morbid thoughts when Mikey turns around to talk to us. He avoids my stare as he talks, but he does glance in my direction.
“We need to go on foot from here. A town
’s coming up, and I want to ditch the car before we get there. It’s the first place they will look for us,” he explains.
“Where are we going then?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t know. My short-term plan is to dump the car into this ditch and head across this plain.” He points to the left of us. “I say we head to those mountains—it should take us a good couple of hours, bringing us to nightfall. We can camp out there until tomorrow and make a decision then. Even Fallon won’t risk hunting for us at night.”
“Let
’s go then.” Emily unclips her seatbelt and climbs out without the slightest hesitation.
Alek quickly follows, opening up the trunk and dragging out backpacks for us all. That leaves me and Mikey alone together for the first time. I watch him, and he continues to avoid my gaze. A minute or so pass
es, with the sound of Emily and Alek talking quietly, before Mikey turns to get out of the car.
“Wait…that
’s it?” I snap.
Mikey turns back around. “What do you want me to say?” He finally looks at me, looking right into my eyes
, and I finally see what the problem is: a little part of him is dead. Lines are thick under his eyes, a grayness making him look tired. The sparkle is gone, the sparkle in his eye that was Mikey.
“What did they make you do?” I ask quietly.
He scoffs out a laugh. “You know what they made me do.”
I
look away because I do know. They made him kill—kill innocent people—but what I don’t understand is why he went along with it when he didn’t have to.
“But why,
Mikey? You didn’t want to harm anyone, that’s why you left in the first place.” I scoot forward in my chair, bringing us almost nose to nose. “Help me understand, why would you go against everything you believe in?” I try to wipe the anger out of my voice. “You’re…not the man I thought you were, but I want to understand. Why?”
He reaches out a rough hand and strokes my cheek. I don
’t flinch from his touch. This is Mikey, and he wouldn’t hurt me. And with that touch, with his finger trailing the scar on my face, it hits me: the reason why he did it, why he killed all those people.
“Because of me,
” I say. I don’t ask. To ask would be stupid of me, because I know it to be the truth.
Mikey offers a sad smile. “I
’m sorry that they hurt you, that I dragged you into my shit.” He looks down. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be the man you wanted me to be. I guess Crunch was right, I guess I am like her after all.”
I almost don
’t hear the last words, he says them so quietly. Aah, Crunch: the superbitch from hell. Yeah, she said they were alike, that they would both do anything to survive. But she was wrong. That girl was crazy mental. Without a doubt
she
would have done anything to survive, but Mikey? No, Mikey would die before he hurt innocent people. And that’s his sacrifice—to me. I survived, and hundreds of innocents didn’t. What he did is on my hands too now, and I should be angry with him for that, but as I look out the window and see Emily standing with Alek, I know that I can’t be.
The pressure of the
burden still weighs heavy on my heart, but how can I hate him—be angry at him—when I would have done the same damn thing to protect Emily? He did it to save me, not to hurt me, so maybe I’m as big a monster as he is.
I sob and lean into his touch
before pressing my lips to his. I feel his body tremble as he tries to contain his own tears, his own pain. The guilt wars inside of me—of him. I’m grateful to be alive, but not at the cost of someone else’s life. But I can’t say that to this man—not ever.
“Thank you, Mikey,
” I whisper as my tears mix with our kisses.
“I
’m sorry that—”
I put a finger to his lips. “Hush, you don
’t need to apologize.”
He looks into my eyes again, and I swear I can see his broken
, tortured soul. “I do. I saw the way you looked at me back there when I told you I helped the Forgotten. I’ll never forget that look.”
I shake my head. “
I’m sorry, I’m a judgmental asshole. I didn’t know all the details.”
“It doesn’t matter. You were right
: I am a murderer.”
“
We’ll get through this—together.” I lean in and kiss him again, pushing my tongue past his lips and tasting tears—mine, his, who knows? They all mingle together as I try to soothe him, try to quieten his conscience.
“We
need to go.” Alek speaks up from outside, pulling both Mikey and I from the kiss.
“It
’ll be okay, we’ll sort this out,” I say softly.
With that statement he knows
that I don’t mean him and me; he knows that I mean the Forgotten. We’ll sort them out. We’ll fight them, kill them, we’ll fucking end them any way we can so that no one has to go through this again.
Together,
somehow, we’ll get through it.
*
After pushing the car into a deep ditch with another rusted-out vehicle and covering it with grass and dirt, we begin our trek across the plains. They’re sodden and thick with knee-deep mud in places, making it impossible to pass by, meaning we have to divert our paths to an even longer way around.
The day is long as the fields pass us by. The mountains are further away than any of us thought or realized. Not that it wou
ld have mattered—this is what we have to do, and the best way for the Forgotten to lose our trail is for us to cross multiple muddy fields and head out across rocky landscapes and hopefully up a small cliff.
As the
day gives way to night, panic rises between us all. With no flashlights, the landscape is getting more and more difficult to travel on. I’m trying to bite my tongue and not yell at them ‘great job saving me and packing backpacks for us all, but you fucked up not packing any flashlights!’ We’re growing tired and hungry, and the thought of not being able to see if any deaders creep up on us is weighing us down with more worry. Not that deaders tend to creep—they generally shamble aimlessly—but the dread of stumbling across a shambling zombie is still there regardless.
I
’m more than happy to see the ground getting rockier as we travel until eventually, sheer cliff faces seem to pop up in the dark all around us. We stumble around until we’re covered on all sides by mountains, and then we begin to climb as the smell of the dead rises around us.
“
Shit,” I whisper, my fingernails digging into the hard rock of the cliff face.
Deaders stumble
into our position, waiting underneath us and reaching up with rotten arms. They gurgle louder and hiss, seemingly getting more distressed and pissed off the higher we get.
Can deaders get distressed?
I know they get angry and violent, but distressed? That implies feelings, emotions, and that doesn’t seem right for deaders.
“Nina? Move it.”
I look across at Mikey and scowl, but continue to climb nonetheless. Truth be told, I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped. I slip my booted foot into a large groove and stretch up higher.
We make it up onto a small ledge, and all four of us shuffle in
side a little cave and out of sight. We’re not particularly high up, but it’s more a case of knowing the simple rule of life: out of sight, out of mind. Stupid zombies.
We rest in
the dark, catching our breath and listening to the growls from down below. Nothing stirs tonight other than the deaders and our racing hearts, and somehow, one by one, we quickly fall asleep. Still curled up in our sodden clothes, with our heads resting on our rucksacks, I doubt any of us dream.
*
I wake to the sound of whispering, slowly peeking one eye open and then the other. My ass is numb and my hipbone feels like someone smashed it with a shovel. I push myself up to a sitting position and look around to see Emily and Alek talking by the entrance. I make my way over to them with a grumble as I stretch, and a series of loud cracks can be heard coming from my back and shoulders. Emily turns to look at me with a wince of sympathy for my aching body.
“You decided to wake up then?”
“It’s a Sunday—my day off,” I snark and sit down. “Why am I always the last one to wake up?”
“I
’m always first to sleep.” Emily shrugs. “Is it a Sunday?”
I chuckle.
“No idea. Anything happening down there?”
Emily shakes her head. “
No deaders this morning and we haven’t heard or seen anything from anyone else.” She shrugs.
“And Mikey?” I ask, looking back inside the cave and seeing his backpack and him both missing.
“He went to try and find food. We have some stuff with us, but he wanted something more substantial, I guess.” She shrugs again. “Or maybe he wanted to scout out further afield for any signs of Fallon.”
I sit down next to her and look across at Alek. “I would have thought you would have gone with him.”
“I went for firewood, he went for food,” he says with a thumb over his shoulder to the firewood lined up to one side. “Besides, I think he wanted some time alone.”
And with that we all fall into silence
again. I feel a little like a third wheel sitting with the two lovebirds—not that they do anything to make me feel uncomfortable, but it’s always awkward when you’re the third wheel. I head to my backpack and rummage through it for food, finding a couple of MRE packs and some glucose tablets. I chug down a tablet and wash it down with a ration pack and shudder. These things don’t get any better no matter how hungry you are.
Gathering my knife and a rock
, I sit and begin trying to sharpen it to a more serious point. If this is my only weapon for now, I’m making damn certain it’s as sharp as an arrow.
“Heads up,
” Emily calls.
I go and stand by her side, looking out
onto the sodden plains and seeing Mikey trudging across. His head is low to his chest, as if the world is his burden. In his hand he carries something—rabbit, fowl, I’m not really sure, but I’m more than happy to see food after the bitter taste of gross tasting potatoes and gravy. I shudder at the lingering aftertaste in my mouth.
He looks up as he gets close, offering a small smile that doesn
’t quite reach his eyes. He’s broken, seriously broken, and I want to fix him but I don’t know how. How do you fix something when you’re broken yourself? Seeing his face lined with worry, pain etched behind his eyes, I know I have to try.
He
ties the animal’s legs together with some rope or string, I can’t tell which, and then ties it onto the waistband of his jeans and begins to climb, finally pulling himself up and over the ledge where we’re sitting, his arm muscles straining beneath his too small sweater. He makes that shit look simple, when I distinctly remember that last night my arms were burning and my fingers struggling to find any purchase. Maybe I’m a wimp, maybe it was exhaustion. Right now, as he does it—with a dead animal tied at his waist—it makes me want to see him beat his chest and shout ‘me man.’ I chuckle and follow up with a small cough to cover it. Now is not the time to start weirding out.
“
Hey,” he grunts as he clambers up over the edge and sits down.
“How is it out there?” Alek asks, piling the logs to
gether in preparation for a fire.
“It
’s pretty dead. I don’t think we need to worry for a while.” Mikey pulls out a knife and begins to skin what I can now see is a rabbit.
I look at Emily, trying to contain a
nother giggle. “Pretty dead out there, huh?” I ask.
Mikey looks up at
me. “Yeah, that’s what I sa—” He grins as realization dawns on him. “Very funny.”
“Mikey made a joke.
” I push Emily in the shoulder, making her laugh.