Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (27 page)

“That trails’ looking pretty good right now, sis.”

“No way,” insisted Troi. “Riley was right. If they put something like that here, they want to keep us on the trail. And I don’t want to see why they want us on the trail.”

The zombie had regained its feet and strained against its tether. It gnashed its teeth and clawed at the air between them.

“We’re lucky these things aren’t too smart,” said Troi.

“This one’s a brain, right?” asked Evan. “I mean, the way it was
waiting
there in the trees. Waiting for us to walk by.”

“Yeah,” Riley agreed. “This is one of the ‘smarter’ ones.”

There was no sign of intelligence in the zombie’s dead eyes. There was no sign of anything. The spark of life had long disappeared from its gaze.

“We’re wasting our time…” Evan lookedup through the trees, trying to get a bead on the sun and its position in the sky.

“Ev’s right.” Riley gave the dead thing on its chain one final look and walked around it, leaving a wide berth.

As the trees thinned, the ground they walked on softened noticeably. Soon it clung to the soles of their boots and only let go with a violent sucking noise. When the four friends reached the edge of the marshlands, this change in geography made sense. They were finally out under the sun, which had moved across the western sky.

“A swamp…” Evan stared at the mangrove trees ahead of them.

“We can skirt it on either side.” Riley looked left and right. “But that way—” she motioned to their right “—looks like it heads back south a little.”

“We don’t want to be heading south,” said Troi.

“No, we don’t.” Riley had to agree with her. Their pursuers would be coming somewhere from that direction.

“Let’s go through the swamp,” said Anthony.

“I don’t know…” Riley peered off past the mangroves, into the marshlands with their green-slicked pools of dank water, into the twisted bracken. “It’ll slow us down.”

“It will,” agreed Evan. “But it’ll slow them down too.”

“If they follow us in there,” said Troi. “What if there’s a shortcut around this?”

“You see any shortcuts?” asked Evan. The swamp land disappeared as far as the eye could see in either direction. “Even if there are, they’re going to have to pick up the trail on the other side where we come out. That won’t be obvious to them.”

“Unless they have dogs.” Troi tried to think of every possibility.

“I didn’t see any dogs back at their camp. And I don’t hear any now.”

“That’s because they’re not chasing us yet,” said Riley. “I don’t want to go through this swamp. I say we head that way.” She motioned farther westward.

“And I say we go through the swamp,” Evan said.

“I don’t know…” Troi looked from one direction to the other. “Riley’s been right so far.”

“Why don’t you want to go through the swamp, sis?”

“It’ll cost us a lot of time. We’ll be lucky to make it through there before dark.”

“Yeah, you’re right…” Anthony had to agree with her about that. “But if we head west, we’re not headed the way we need to be going. We’ll hit that fence they told us about.”

“Eventually.”

“So we’ve got two for the swamp and one against.” Evan looked at Troi. “What do you say, Troi?”

“Riley’s been right so far…I don’t want to get stuck in that swamp at night—”

“Then we should go,” Evan said firmly. “Now.”

“—but I don’t want to waste any time going around it either.” Troi looked at Riley. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I can live with the swamp.”

“It’s settled then.” Evan looked like he was chomping at the bit to get going into the swampland. “I don’t expect you to go first, Rye. It wasn’t your idea.”

“It was my idea,” said Anthony. “I’ll lead.”

“No.” Riley stepped forward. “You won’t. We’re in this together—the four of us—until the end, right? Then let’s go.”

“Red, you’re gonna wanna hear this.”

MacKenzie called out loud enough to draw the woman’s attention but no one else’s. They were camped for dinner, the fifteen hunters. Thomas and Gammon were alone up ahead, discussing things. MacKenzie had walked a bit of a ways away from the others and set up the ham radio on top of a rock, on which he squatted.

“What we got, Mac?” Red walked over to him. Tommy noticed something was up, and nonchalantly broke away from Keith and David and the brother’s banter, joining Red and MacKenzie.

“Listen.” Mac had the radio up loud enough for the three of them to hear.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
—

“I hear static,” said Tommy. Red held up her hand, signaling he should wait.

shhhhhhhhhhh
—

“They’re all over us! They’re all over the fucking place!” The voice on the other end of the transmission was panicked.

Red nodded to MacKenzie. Mac held the talk button on the transmitter down. “What’s going on back at home, Garrit?” They waited and listened.

Shhhhhhhhhhhh
—

“Garrit, this is Mac, over.” MacKenzie tried again. “What’s going on?”

“Mac!” The voice was hushed, as if the man were whispering. “Mac—it’s Cosmo and—oh shit!”

shhhhhhhhhhhh—

“What the…” Tommy feared he knew.

“Red?” MacKenzie looked up to her for an answer.

“Damn it. Cosmo.” Red wouldn’t have believed it, but it made sense. Fifteen of the most able bodied men from the camp were out here with Thomas on the hunt. Gammon had suggested that fifteen was too many, but the old man had insisted all fifteen that wanted to go should be allowed. Thomas thought it would be good for morale.

There were other men back at camp, but most of the people they’d left behind were women and children, the elderly, the ill. Of course Cosmo and his family would attack now, of all times.

“Red.” Tommy looked around at the other men who were seated in conversation, enjoying their repast. None appeared very interested in whatever the trio over by the radio discussed. “We gotta go back.”

“
No
.”

“No?” Tommy wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

“No.”

“Red…” said MacKenzie. “My family’s back there…all of these men’s families…”

“And they’re either okay or they’re not. We’re hours out of camp. There’s nothing we can do for them. They’re either going to survive or they’re dead already.”

“You’re serious?” Tommy stared at her.

“You know I am.”

“Well, maybe my dad will see it diff—”

“No. We are not telling your dad.”

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—

“You’re kidding? What the fuck do you—”

“Keep your voice down.” Red smiled over at Keith who had looked over. She talked through her teeth. Their radio blared static. “We’ve got four people out in these woods somewhere ahead of us. If they get away, we’re screwed.”

“But Cosmo—”

“We know Cosmo. We know what we’re dealing with with him, and we know where to find him. After we take care of those four up ahead, we’ll take care of Cosmo.”

“I don’t know…” Tommy sounded torn.

“I do,” Red insisted. “
Do not
tell your father. You either, Mac. Not one word of this from either of you to anybody. Do we understand each other?”

“Or what?”

Red stared Tommy down.

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—

“Your father
needs
this hunt. Do you understand me? Do you?”

Tommy suspected she was right in more ways than he was aware. “Yeah.”

“Then get back over to David and Keith and whatever crap they’re talking before they get suspicious. Go.”

Tommy looked back at the little fiery-headed girl with a mixture of uncertainty and anger on his face.

“You can trust me, Red.”

“I know I can, Mac.”

“I’m just worried about Janis and our kids, you know.”

“I know.”

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
—“Anybody there? Anybody listening?”

Red nodded to MacKenzie.

“Garrit? Garrit is that you? Come in.”

“That his name?” The voice on the other end replied. “That
was
his name.” It laughed.

“Cosmo, is that you?”

“You want to put the old man on? Let me talk to him?”

Red looked over to where Thomas and Gammon stood talking. Thomas was smoking.

“Anything you need to say, you can say to me,” MacKenzie said.

“Oh yeah? Well listen to this.”

MacKenzie looked up to Red.

“Dad—dad help us!”

“Shut up while your brother sucks Gunther’s dick, you little fuck.”

“It’s Phil, Red.” MacKenzie stared in mounting disgust at the radio.

“I know.”

“Now you—” Cosmo’s voice returned, but he wasn’t talking to MacKenzie. “What’s the matter? You gonna choke? Take it out of there, Gunther, and stick it in that one’s—”

Red smashed the stock of her Noveske Diplomat down on the radio, bashing it against the rock. MacKenzie jumped back, startled, landing on his rear. He looked up to her.

“Not a word.” Little Red hopped down off the rock and walked off to be alone.

Some of the men looked over at them.

“That fuckin’ lil’ Red,” remarked David to his brother and Tommy. “She’s crazy, ain’t she?”

They moved through muck that rose to the middle of their thighs and soaked their clothing through to the flesh. The mud beneath the water suctioned their feet and threatened not to let go. They walked with their arms raised at their sides, brushing away errant branches, looking like blind people as they fought for each step.

When the first zombie sat up in the muck, Troi screamed and jumped to the side. The mud and water cascaded off the creature’s head and shoulders as it blinked its eyes clear and stared at her. Its features were obscured by the dirt and filth, muddied, but it was dead and it was hungry. It reached for Troi, but couldn’t get a hold of her because it was secured in place. The undead could not rise from its seated position.

“Holy cow!” Evan grabbed Troi by the shoulders and twisted her so that his body was between the zombie and his friend. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“They’re in the swamp…” Riley shook her head in disbelief. “They’re in the swamp.”

As if one cue, a second and then a third zombie surfaced from a prone to a seated position in the murky waters around them. Their wrists were shackled in such a way that they could not raise their hands above their shoulders, the chains disappearing into the mud around their waists. A fourth, fifth, and sixth sat up, blinking fetid water and mud out of their eyes, searching out the humans.

Anthony stepped to the side, away from another zombie that had just risen. Some of the undead moaned, and one was actively screamed at the top of its lungs.

Troi buried her head in Evan’s shoulder. “It’s okay…it’s okay…it’s okay.” Evan watched the surface of the water around them apprehensively.

“They’re weighted down!” Riley yelled over the din. “They can’t get up.”

“Great!” Anthony yelled back. He tried to count the heads and shoulders of the zombies reaching towards them, but stopped after he’d counted off two dozen. In the meantime, his sister had wrested a large branch from an overhanging mangrove, breaking it off.

“Stick right behind me!” Riley shouted to her friends. “Step
exactly
where I step!”

She moved forward, careful to avoid the zombies they could see, testing the putrid waters ahead of them with the mangrove branch, hoping to rouse anything that might lie in wait there before they stepped on it. Within a few minutes, they had left the undead and their hungry moans behind, the water had fallen to shin-level, and even Troi had pulled it together again and was composed.

“That was disgusting,” Troi said to Evan. She reached down, trying to fling swamp scum off her legs.

“Sick bastards.” Evan was referring to the men and women who had set the zombies in place. “You okay now?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The swamplands alternated between large expanses of muck and firmer ground above water. They saw little wild life and no further sign of Zed.

When they broke from the swamp, the sun was sinking, lost to them behind the trees on the horizon.

“What do we do?” Anthony put it to the group.

“We keep going for as long as we can,” his sister said. None of them had stopped. “We use whatever light we’ve got.”

“Rye’s right.” Evan looked behind them, back into the swamp and the horrors buried within.

They trudged along, their adrenaline diminished, fatigue having long since set in. It was an effort of will for each to keep going, but together they plowed ahead, into and through the trees, until Riley called it quits.

“I can’t see ahead of us,” she said. “I can’t see where we’re stepping or what we’re stepping into.”

“Man, we are going to lose a lot of time tonight.” Evan had been thinking about it all day. The little redhead and the others had to have some way of navigating by night. They wouldn’t be camped out somewhere like he and his friends were going to be. They’d be on the hunt through the dark.

“So we get up first things and we go,” said Anthony. “Should we try to start a fire?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Riley.

“Bad idea.” Evan shook his head. “They can see a fire.”

“If they’re close enough, yes. But it’s going to be cold tonight and we’re soaking wet.”

“Okay.”

They stayed close to the spot they had chosen and gathered as many dry branches, twigs, and what kindling they could find. Riley and Evan got a fire going, and when it had caught they lay larger, thicker branches upon it.

“That feels good…” Troi rubbed her hands in front of the fire. “You okay, Ev?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking.”

“You look like you’re thinking about someone.”

“I am.”

“Who?”

“My nephew.” Evan smiled at Troi. One thing their misadventure was impressing on him was how outrageously attractive Riley’s best friend was. How’d he never notice that before?

“How old is he?”

“He’s four. He calls me Uncle Ebben—”

“Awww…”

“Ebben. That’s how he says it.”

“Anthony,” Riley whispered to her brother when she thought the others were asleep.