“Mother fu—” Kai stopped and got himself under control. “Okay, got it.” He shook his head. “I gotta rethink my membership in this particular club.”
“Go get Gabriel, okay?” I said. “Just ask Kaitlyn to help us cover him. But tell her to stay outside!” Kai ran out of the cabin and I hunkered down next to Jake, still not willing to touch him. “Jake, we’re sorry about that. Kai thought you were a zombie. But he knows better now.”
“One of those things?” Jake’s eyes narrowed, his expression switching from terrified to dangerous in the space of a few seconds. “I’m not one of those things. Don’t you call me that!” A drop of blood trickled down his face to his upper lip. He flicked it off with his tongue, eyes closing briefly as he savored the taste. Then his eyes went wide with horror and he wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth.
“I’m
not
one of them,” he whimpered.
“No, you’re just sick. We have to get you to a doctor. Let’s go outside.” I felt like a broken record as I repeated this several more times, but Jake responded to my words or my tone, and finally left the damned cabin.
Mack and I were right behind him. Kaitlyn waited for us outside.
“Just sit here,” I said, pointing to one of the gliders. He sat, limbs folding up underneath him as if someone had cut his strings. He rocked slowly back and forth in the chair, pushing off with his feet. It creaked in protest, hinges in dire need of oiling.
“I’m hungry.”
Creak. Creak. Creak.
I ignored him, scanning the fog-shrouded parking lot, then the buildings, looking for Gabriel and the rest of the team.
“I’m
hungry!”
Feeling the urgency in his voice, I looked back at Jake.
“We’ll get you food when we get you to a doctor.” It took an effort to keep my voice calm. I’d seen his last meal.
“I’ve got a protein bar,” Kaitlyn offered, reaching into one of her pockets and pulling out a Think Thin bar.
She held it out in front of her.
Jake’s eyes flickered toward the bar. He reached for it.
“Kaitlyn, no!”
I lunged forward as Jake grabbed Kaitlyn’s arm, jerking her off balance into his arms as he sank his teeth into her neck. She shrieked with surprise and pain, dropping her M-4 as she clawed frantically at his head and hands, trying to throw him off.
I heard footsteps running toward us from across the parking lot as Jake clamped onto her like a leech, biting deep, chewing and worrying at her flesh, ignoring whatever pain he must have felt as her hands clenched in his hair, pulling with all her strength.
I managed to wedge my arm in-between his neck and her body, getting him in a chokehold and cutting off his oxygen supply. Kaitlyn jabbed a finger into one of his eyes. He screamed involuntarily, teeth losing their hold.
She immediately jerked away from his mouth, neck pouring out blood through the ragged wound he’d inflicted.
He still had hold of her arm, however, and yanked her back toward him, growling in his throat even as I pressed my forearm harder into his neck.
The stock of Mack’s gun smashed down against Jake’s wrist, shattering bone and forcing him to let go of Kaitlyn. She staggered back, hands clasped against her bleeding neck as blood spurted out between her fingers.
Deprived of his prey, Jake twisted like an eel in my grip and went for my neck. I managed to shove my arm against his Adam’s apple before his teeth sunk into my flesh. He snapped at me like a rabid animal, his breath wafting over me like a week’s worth of spoiled meat.
I heard yelling, and out of the corner of my eye saw Mack raise his weapon and smash the butt end down on Jake’s head with a sickening crack. Jake went limp
and crumpled to the ground, blood oozing from an indentation in his scalp.
I scrambled out from under the dead weight as Kai and Gabriel sprinted up, Lil, Tony and Gentry hard on their heels. I scanned for Kaitlyn, who swayed on her feet, hand still clasped over the wound on her neck, blood seeping between her fingers.
Her face was chalky white from shock and blood loss. Mack and I grabbed her before she collapsed on the dirt next to her attacker, leading her to the glider as her hand slipped off the wound and fresh blood spurted out.
“Shit!” Slapping my hand over the wound, I looked frantically up at Gabriel. “She’s bleeding to death!”
Things happened really quickly after that.
Mack dashed into one of the cabins, emerging almost immediately with a red flannel pillowcase. As he knelt by Kaitlyn’s side and pressed the cloth against the wound in her neck, Gabriel’s gaze flicked from Jake’s body to Kaitlyn, then to me and my blood-splattered hands and clothing.
“Ashley, are you okay?”
I registered the concern in his voice, but didn’t have time to think about it.
“I’m fine, but Kaitlyn... her neck. He bit her.”
Gabriel started to reply, then tensed.
“What—” I began.
He shushed me with a slashing hand gesture, his posture one of intense concentration. Then we all heard it—rising moans coming from all directions, the sound muffled, yet echoing all around us as if rebounding off the thick fog. Nothing was visible yet, but they had to be close.
Gabriel didn’t waste any time.
“Get to the truck.”
“You’re not leaving me here.” Jake pushed himself up on his hands, blood streaming from the wound on his head. I thought I could see brains through the blood.
How is he even alive?
He raised his head slowly and saw me.
“You can’t leave me,” he said. “Please, help me!” I hesitated as zombies appeared in the woods behind the cabins. We had to take him with us.
Didn’t we?
“Please...” He tried to stand, but fell back.
I took a step toward him, one of those stupid
yeah, I know better
moves we all do on occasion. Kai grabbed my arm and yanked me away, hard.
“Leave him.”
“But—”
Kai shook his head.
“I don’t care if he’s a wild card. He nearly killed Kaitlyn. He can stay here and get ripped to pieces. You got me?” He stared me down until I nodded. He was right, but I didn’t have to like it.
Kai let go of me, then helped Mack get Kaitlyn. They half carried, half dragged her between them to the truck. The rest of us fell into a loose formation around them as rotting figures began shambling toward us out of the fog.
“Please!” Jake wailed from behind us. “Don’t leave me! You have to help Shanna and Tyce.” I risked a look back and saw zombies converging on him.
And then they lurched right past as if he didn’t exist. Jake continued to screech, even though he remained untouched.
And suddenly it hit me. There hadn’t been any zombies trying to get into Jake’s cabin. They would have known there was prey in there, and would have been pounding on the door and walls to get at it. Jake wasn’t just crazy, and I didn’t think he was a wild card.
Zombies continued to pour out of the forest. Gabriel took out three of them in rapid succession with precise headshots. Time to get the hell out of Bigfoot’s Revenge.
“Don’t try to take them all out!” he shouted. “Just get to the truck!”
“Someone open the door!” Mack yelled, stumbling under Kaitlyn’s dead weight as she started to lose consciousness. Kai helped prop her up, but that put three of them out of the fight.
Slinging his M-4 over one shoulder, Tony retrieved his sledgehammer from the ground and swung it in a vicious arc as zombies closed in from either side. He knocked two of them backward, roaring like a wrathful god with each swing—a teenage punk version of Thor.
Lil ran up next to him, ducking the sledgehammer with almost choreographed grace. She reached the passenger side of the truck and pulled open the doors. Tony beat the zombies away as Mack and Kai got Kaitlyn into the backseat.
Gabriel and Lil covered the rest of us, Lil using her M-4 with good effect, if not with Gabriel’s lethal accuracy. Gentry and I clambered into the rear of the Suburban.
Tony’s sledgehammer was spinning in rapid figures of eight, so fast it looked like some sort of massive eggbeater. Gabriel tossed his rifle into the truck and slid across to the driver’s seat, starting the engine. Lil jumped in next to him as Tony continued to bludgeon the approaching zombies, his face a mask of bloody rage.
“Tony!” Gabriel roared, “Get your ass in here now!”
Swinging his sledgehammer one more time and cracking the heads of several zoms, Tony dove into the back seat, slamming the door behind him as Gabriel hit the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot.
This was one of those times I wished I didn’t have enhanced senses. Mingling with the unnatural moans and growl of the engine, I could still hear Jake’s wails, even as we drove into a roadblock of more zombies.
Undead hands grasped at the vehicle. The sound of fingers squelching on the windows mixed with the thud of metal hitting flesh as we lurched forward. The Suburban shuddered with each impact, but held the road.
The perfect family vehicle. Seats a family of eight and holds the road while skidding through a bloody horde.
I had to get a grip.
Peering out the back window, all I could see were ghouls staggering through the fog, lurching after us down the road. And out the side windows I saw more flesh-eaters among the mist-shrouded trees.
Where the hell were they all coming from?
Gabriel drove like the proverbial bat out of hell, toward the highway that would take us back to Big Red, without even slowing for turns or potholes. Gentry and I didn’t have seatbelts and were forced to brace ourselves against any handhold we could find. After about five minutes the zombies receded into the foggy distance and Gabriel slowed down minimally.
He looked into the rear-view mirror.
“How’s Kaitlyn?”
Mack glanced up at him, still holding the pillowcase firmly against Kaitlyn’s neck.
“The bleeding’s slowing down, but her breathing is rough. And the wound is probably infected.”
“She’s a wild card,” Gabriel countered. “She can’t get infected.”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see me.
“The guy that bit her... he wasn’t a zombie,” I said. “He was still alive when we found him.”
“What?” The word was explosive, like a bullet.
“He’d been bitten,” I said softly. “He said he could feel himself rotting. But he was alive, and he was eating his wife and son.”
Gabriel blanched, his skin actually turning pale as I watched in the rear-view mirror.
“Dude had to be fucking crazy,” Tony said.
“No. He wasn’t crazy.” Gabriel spoke in a carefully controlled voice. But some emotion lurked very close to the surface. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he wasn’t
just
crazy.”
He paused, and through the rear-view mirror I saw a play of emotions rippling across his face so quickly I couldn’t identify any of them. An instant later he’d schooled his expression back into Stoic 101. He started to speak again, but whatever he had to say got lost as the Suburban rounded a curve and headed straight for a knot of figures standing motionless in the middle of the road.
Gabriel twisted the wheel to one side in a knee-jerk reaction. As the SUV left the asphalt and veered off into the trees, I got a glimpse of the would-be road-kill Gabriel had swerved to avoid. Zombies. At least six of them, just standing there as if they’d been waiting for us.
Our truck bounced over uneven terrain and off of redwoods before hitting something, maybe a stump. It teetered for a microsecond, then rolled over and over, all of us inside thrown around like rocks in a tumbler, only without the shiny polished finish at the end of the ride.
Gentry and I had the worst of it, without any seatbelts or “Oh Jesus” handles to hang onto, our weapons flailing around as we rolled. Gentry did his best to shield me by wrapping his arms around my upper body, one hand pressing my head against his chest.
Something hard hit the back of my head, but my helmet protected me from more than an uncomfortable
thonk
and a little bit of brain rattling.
When we finally came to a halt, passenger side on the ground and the undercarriage pressed up against a huge redwood, Gentry and I were smushed up against the window, limbs entangled with scabbards, M-4s, and each other.
I pushed his forearm off my mouth.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, wincing as he did so.
“Yeah, I think so.”
The SUV’s engine gave a final death rattle and cut out.
Assorted groans and little cries of pain filled the vehicle as the shock of the accident wore off enough for us to start moving around. We were all bruised and bloodied.
Shaken, but not stirred.
Shut up, brain.
“Everyone okay?” Gabriel hung awkwardly from his seatbelt, suspended sideways next to Lil, who was pressed up against the passenger door.
“Kaitlyn’s in bad shape,” Mack said, voice thick with concern. “The bleeding started up again.”
“Let’s get her out of the vehicle.” Gabriel unlatched the driver’s side door and gave a mighty shove. It swung open and then slammed shut again, gravity being what it is.
“Shit,” he said. “Lil, I’m probably going to step on you a little bit here.”
“That’s okay,” Lil responded.
He unlocked his seatbelt and fell on top of her. I heard a small “Oof!” sound, but otherwise she didn’t complain. Somehow Gabriel ended up feet first on the passenger window so he could use his height and long arms to open the driver’s door with enough leverage to insure that it didn’t slam shut again.
He pulled himself out of the SUV, then reached back in and helped Lil, as well. I heard the sound of his feet crunching on the ground as he moved around to the back of the SUV, where he popped the latch and opened the rear door, holding it up as Gentry and I slithered awkwardly out into the fog, grabbing our guns as we did so.
I hit the ground, wincing as my body protested any movement after being put through an automatic spin cycle.
“You okay?” Gabriel put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“I think so.” I gave him a brief smile.
“Good.” He reached out and touched my face, so quickly it might not have happened. Then he was all business as he leaned in the back. “Can you get Kaitlyn out through the back?”