She let the knife slide into her palm, gripping it loosely like she’d been taught, and gave the man’s groin a surgical uppercut, squeezing the handle on impact. The blade sunk in to the hilt. His mouth opened in shock, but no sounds came out. He dropped the rifle, placed a weak hand on Riley before crumpling to the ground. She tried grabbing the knife to pull it out, but the man was kicking wildly and began to shriek. Needing him to be quiet, she began kicking him in the face before realizing the throat would be a better target and silenced his cries there. He writhed around, his face turning red then purple.
Riley picked up the rifle and put a round in the man’s forehead. More voices rang out from down the street. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and began climbing the makeshift perimeter. Ascending was easy, so many divots and holes for her small hands and feet, but the barbed wire would prove different.
Shots began sounding from far off. Riley climbed faster, slipping a few times, but managing. Tiny punctures appeared in the automobiles’ metal flesh where the bullets connected. The barbed wire wasn’t in the best shape, allowing her passage, but not without some ghastly gashes along her arms and legs. Feeling the wind from bullets brush her hair, she tried hurrying down the other side, but wound up falling. Luckily, she landed safely on the roof of an old Chevy Camaro a few feet from the ground.
Getting to her feet, feeling no broken bones from the fall, she climbed down the rest of the way to the ground. Men from the other side were shouting.
Riley stood with her back against the Camaro, deciding her best course of action, when a sharp, vise-like pain erupted from her right ankle. Looking down, her breath caught in her chest. Her eyes went wide and she began to shake as a zombie continued to gnaw away at her leg.
Chapter Twelve
Infection
The zombie tore into Riley’s flesh like a starved wolf. The pain was intense, like a saw’s blade cutting into her, making her scream. Everything blacked out of view, except for the rotten yellowed teeth in the zombie’s mouth, as if she was peering through a dark tunnel at them. Regaining her station quickly, realizing she needed to do something, she slammed the gun’s muzzle against the thing’s head and pulled the trigger.
The weapon jerked wildly and let out an ear-deafening crack. The damage was awesome—the back of the zombie’s head disintegrating into tiny morsels of sodden dust. The force from the shot caused the living corpse to lose its grip and Riley quickly pulled her leg away from the creature.
The undead thing was still moving, the eye-brain connection obviously not severed. It began clawing itself toward her—a callous clump of decayed meat. Aiming, holding the gun tighter, Riley fired at the zombie’s forehead. It blew apart, leaving a motionless dead body with a stump where the head used to be. She had no idea what kind of rifle she was using, but it was powerful, almost too much so.
She took off running, but immediately collapsed to the ground, her ankle screaming at her. Fighting through the pain, she rose to her feet and began limping as fast as she could away from the wall.
She was in a wooded area, a small city preserve. Looking ahead, she saw five undead coming her way. She waited for them to draw nearer and began firing. With each shot, her shoulder ached with pain. The gun had no suppressor, her body taking the full brunt of the recoil. She kept missing wildly. It was too difficult to aim with her ankle and shoulder aching. As the undead drew closer, she decided to use the power to her advantage. Yelling at the top of her lungs, she began shooting at the zombies’ bodies.
The frail undead bodies, for they were horribly decayed, began falling apart like papier-mache dolls. Arms and legs fell away—the zombies’ bodies shuddering, as if electrocuted, under the barrage of bullets. Riley managed to kill only one, but it didn’t matter as the others were reduced to jumbled piles of body parts. And just as the last zombie fell, the gun clicked empty.
The undead were down and her way appeared clear, at least for the moment. She could no longer hear the men’s voices from the other side of the wall. Silence filled her ears, the gun’s retort temporarily deafening her. She needed her hearing, it was an important survival tool, but it was nothing she could worry about now. She had to keep moving. She glanced backward to the wall and saw no bodies coming over the top, yet. Turning back around, she took a step forward, her ankle screaming again, and halted immediately. More undead were approaching through the trees like ghosts from a graveyard. Their numbers kept multiplying. The gunfire must’ve alerted them. Out of bullets and with her ankle making it impossible to run, Riley didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t want to be eaten alive, ripped apart and devoured. Looking down at her blood-soaked gown, she realized what her future held and realized being eaten was a better outcome than becoming a member of the undead. She wished she had a single bullet left, one that would end her life and keep her from rising afterward. Her fear was quickly vanquished by the seething anger growing in her bones. How the hell could she have let all this happen? This was not the way she wanted to go out, couldn’t go out. Damn them. She closed her eyes, body tense, ready to accept the pain that was to come before her death. She thought of her father, and hoped to be alongside him soon and to see the mother that she never had a chance to meet.
The faint sound of gunshots rang out. Riley heard yelling, barely audible. She opened her eyes and saw the zombies’ heads exploding like smashed watermelons. Turning around, she saw armed gang members on top of the wall firing like gunslingers at the undead. A few of the men were rappelling down the makeshift wall. Up top, she saw the fat leader barking commands and pointing at her. She read his lips: “Get the girl,” they said. There was nothing she could do and was scooped up by one of the gang. He grabbed her in a bear hug and dragged her back to the wall where a few other gang members waited.
Once the zombies were destroyed and the gunfire ended, the big man spoke. “Caused quite a bit of trouble for us, you did.” He then nodded to a man standing in front of Riley. He raised his hand and punched her in the face, knocking her out cold.
Riley woke up in a low-lit room. The air was dank and musty smelling, swamp-like. The walls were a dingy gray cinder block and bare except for an occasional graffiti tag. She could hear a man and a woman talking. She recognized the Hag’s voice.
“She’s trouble,” the man said.
“Once she wakes up, we’ll be better able to decide her fate, for I did not see this coming,” the Hag said. She saw the man coming near her, and feigned sleep. Standing over her, his rank body odor filled Riley’s nose, making her want to gag.
“Wake up,” he told her, shaking the bed she was lying on. Riley pretended to come to, slowly.
“Wha…what’s going on?” she said.
“Get up,” the man hollered.
Riley saw his large grimy hand reach over her head and felt him grab her by the hair, yanking her upward.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she said.
The man held her tightly, bringing his ugly face within inches of hers. “You troublesome little bitch,” he said, his breath making her cringe. He let go of her hair, cupping her chin instead. “You’re way more trouble than…” he began, but Riley stopped him by grabbing his wrist and sinking her teeth into his flesh. She bit down as hard as she could, tasting his blood. The man pushed his other hand into her face as he howled in surprise, trying to shove her off. After slipping his hand away, the damage done, he raised his hand to strike.
“Enough,” the Hag yelled. “Don’t you lay a hand on her.” The big man froze, the Hag’s words paralyzing him.
“You little cunt,” the man said, his face scarlet with anger. Riley winked, wanting to send the man over the edge, and succeeded. With his hand still raised, he smacked her across the face.
“That will be enough,” the Hag bellowed and was on the big man like manacles of flesh before he knew it.
The sting of the slap was awful, but Riley managed to shake it off. “Please, my Lady. Don’t let him hurt me anymore, like the other man did.”
The Hag came over, moving as if she had eyes and sat on the bed. “Tell me what happened, my dear.”
“This is bullshit,” the big man said, looming behind the Hag. “She’s playing you for a fool.”
“Silence. I will hear the girl’s words now.”
Riley went on to explain what had happened in the room with Renny. How the man had been abusive—cutting her with his knife and making her fight for her life. She told the Hag that she had no choice but to defend herself and run when the Sisters did not show.
“She’s lying,” the man said, still infuriated and pointing a fat stubby finger in her direction. “She left the compound. Tried to escape, she did.”
Riley grasped the Hag’s arms. “I saw a guard outside patrolling. I tried talking to him, tell him what had happened, but he began shooting at me. I froze, not wanting to get shot, and then he said he would have his way with me before returning me to the room.”
“My men would never do such a thing. Disobeying orders is a death sentence. No one touches a Sister without permission.”
Riley pushed up her gown’s sleeve, revealing the cut she’d given herself earlier. Grabbing the Hag’s hand, she said, “Feel this, my Lady, and see that I do not lie.” The Hag traced the wound. “And my ankle too. The man began to bite me viciously and I feared he wanted to be like the undead.”
“I felt the wound when you were brought in and feared the worst. But you say the man bit you?”
“Yes, my lady. The man was wild and crazy when I refused to allow him to beat me.”
“Oh, this is such nonsense,” the man bellowed, pacing back and forth.
“From now on,” the Hag began, “procreation visits with this one will be supervised.”
“That’s not how our agreement works.”
“You broke the agreement first when one of your men acted out of turn. This girl is special. She will be the key to our survival. A new breed shall come forth. It has been foretold. I have seen it.”
Riley was escorted back to her room. Her head was already pounding and she felt feverish. She had hoped by some crazy act of divine intervention that she hadn’t contracted the zombie virus, but it appeared as if she had. At least, if she had the virus, she managed to bite the gang’s leader and hopefully infect him too.
Lifting up her gown, she saw that the wound on her ankle was darkening, resembling a badly shaped plum. Purple veins began sprouting from the infected area like tentacles, indicating the virus was spreading. Images of her father’s condition after he’d been infected flooded her mind. He’d been so strong, both in mind and body, but was quickly reduced to a blubbering mess. Riley’s breath grew short as she began to panic.
Her only hope at striking a blow into this horrible group of miscreants was to have the gang leader infected, becoming a member of the undead, and in turn infect his people. If they wiped each other out, then maybe the Sisters would die off, having no more outside security or assistance. Riley’s death might then mean something to the world.
She needed to find a way to take down the Sisters in case they survived her plan. Biting them would do no good. Riley would need to slaughter them all and she knew just how to do it. They might be immune to becoming zombies, having had their eyes removed, but they could still serve as meals for the undead. She needed to act fast, for the virus would weaken her.
That night, Riley lay in bed shivering and thinking about Eric and Joanne. She hoped for the best, that they were all right, but deep inside her heart she knew they weren’t.
Eric was most likely dead or being trained to become a gang member or worse; things she didn’t want to think about.
Joanne wasn’t with the Sisters, which meant she was either dead or had become one of the Whores, as they were called—women who stayed in a building and whose sole purpose was to act as fuck things for the men.
Riley writhed in her bed, sweat soaking the sheets. If only she had been able to escape and save them. Find a place for the three of them and live happily ever after like in the fairy tales her father had told her about.
By morning, her paling skin showed through with purple veins. The Sisters could not see her condition, but they’d know as soon as they came near. They would smell her rot, her death, as the Sisters’ senses were far enhanced beyond normal people’s. Riley could only hope she’d turn before they checked on her and she could kill a few, but she doubted she’d change before they arrived. They’d kill her before she could even rise from bed. She lay still, trying to dream happy thoughts, when the door opened to her room.