The Undead Situation (16 page)

Blaze was strong and healthy up until the prison. After a week of barely existent rations and water, she wasn’t feeling too hot herself.

When they arrived at the house, she noted a garden shed in the backyard, which was where Gabe was headed. The fastest route was through the sliding glass door, and the blinds would make a lot of noise when she raised them. However, the front door and garage would make noise as well.

Blaze opted for raising the blinds. She did so slowly, wincing at each squeak. Frank’s snoring never faltered, even as she clicked the lock up and slid the door open just enough to squeeze through.

Outside seemed more dead than usual. Above, the night sky was clear and the weather cold. The lack of tall trees surrounding the house allowed for the moon to provide just enough light to see. The fresh air was still tinged with the faint sent of rot, despite the soft breeze blowing around the house. No undead were in sight. Even if they were in a neighbor’s yard, they wouldn’t see Blaze. There was no fencing leading into the backyard from the front, but walls of overgrown evergreen shrubs flanked both sides in the back. They were just tall enough to grant cover.

Blaze propped the girl against the shed and gripped the MP5. The shed was unassuming, but it was just the place for someone to hide a dying—or already dead—loved one. She jerked the door open and stepped back behind it simultaneously, waiting for a sign of an undead.

Nothing came out and there was no noise. She withdrew Gabe’s flashlight and leaned around the door, shining it in only briefly to confirm there was nothing inside. She then picked Gabe up and set her on the shed floor next to a lawn mower.

It was only a few hours until dawn, and that’s when they’d be leaving. The bottle’s label said the recommended dose for a patient’s age and bodyweight would keep them under for at least four hours. Blaze used more than Gabe needed, but not more than she thought was safe.

That was the point, after all. To make sure Gabe stayed alive. She brought her to the shed to abandon her, leaving her with nothing. When she woke up, they’d be long gone and she’d be completely alone. For her, that would be more of a punishment than death. She’d have to find someone again, but this time she wouldn’t be as lucky. No shoes, no gun, no clue of where she was.

Blaze’s shoulder felt light as she shut the door and walked back to the house, and it wasn’t just because Gabe wasn’t on it.

Smoke snaked around the ceiling, looking down at me with mild interest. It was thick up there and made intricate swirling patterns as air moved through it. My lungs felt a little singed. Why didn’t I wake up sooner?

Another question made its way through my groggy, sleep-addled brain. How could Blaze smoke that many cigarettes? That amount of smoke was more like the house being on fire, not…

Oh.

To my side, Blaze slept on her stomach. Her head was turned to the side, and I saw a glimmer of drool run off onto the pillow. There wasn’t a cigarette in sight, but I could smell ash as she exhaled.

The house is on fire.

“The house is on fire!”

I flung myself out of bed, knocking my head on the nightstand. A brief show of stars swirled around me before I was up and yanking on my boots.

Blaze was in motion, both of her shoes on and tied before I got to my second one. I grabbed my vest and pack, pulling them on hastily, then grabbed my rifle. Words already on my lips, I turned to Blaze to tell her to hurry up, but she stood there as though she lived to be ready for anything.

“Calm down.” She grabbed my arm as I went to throw open the door. “We can’t run out there without knowing the situation.”

“If you open the window they’ll see us!”

“Would you rather just run out?” she hissed. “One way or another we
have
to see what’s out there. There might be more guarding out front, and if we walk out there we’ll be shot.”

She went to the blinds before I could disagree any further and pulled them aside, just a tad, to reveal the backyard. I came up beside her and looked.

Dozens of living, armed people were out there.

The Hummer was pried open and someone worked on hotwiring it. They were going to steal it and everything inside. Every gun and bullet we had been taking for granted would be gone.

A shout caught our attention. Some guy in motorcycle garb pointed at us, waving some kind of machine gun wildly in the other hand.

Chances of us stopping that many people? Slim. Chances of us getting shot? Burned to death? Eaten alive? Left for dead? Very, very high.

“Well, looks like we’re royally fucked.” Blaze gritted her teeth.

“What’re we going to do?”

“Fucking kill them.”

A grim expression shrouded her face as she dropped the blinds back. Only a moment later, shards of glass cascaded onto us as we hit the floor and crawled to the only exit in the room. Now that the window was out, we could hear the bastards outside even better. They wanted to kill us. No surprise there.

When we made it to the door, Blaze reached up and unlocked it, jerking it open. We crawled through and took cover behind the wall before moving up into a crouch.

Frank was already by the garage entrance, pressed up against the wall. He glanced at the two of us then across the living room to the guestroom door where Gabe was.

“I’ll get the other girlie. We gotta get out of here!”

Another burst of gunfire in the bedroom.

He was just about to make a dash down the hall when Blaze grabbed him by the shoulder roughly.

“She’s gone. She left last night.”

Frank’s mouth dropped open and my eyebrows rose in surprise. Gabe left? On her own? That defied her need to be taken care of. I wasn’t about to take Blaze’s word for it. Not after she’d expressed a desire to take Gabe out.

“How the fuck do you know?”

“There’s no time to talk about this, Cyrus!”

Without explaining myself, I moved low and quickly to Gabe’s room. The door was open, which made sense if Gabe left in the night.

She was gone. The bed looked slept in. Her belongings were nowhere to be seen. It didn’t make sense, but Blaze hadn’t been lying about her being gone. Whether it was because of Blaze or not that Gabe left, I didn’t have time to think about.

Glass shattered somewhere in the house. Moans of the undead joined the symphony of yells outside, and so did the frantic shouting of the thieves. Frank produced a bottle of rum and shoved a dirty rag into it.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Blaze said.

“I found it.”

“Of course,” I said, clenching my rifle a little harder.

“We can’t lose that Hummer,” Blaze said. “It’d be an unforgivable setback. If we can run out and manage to get into the Hummer, we can just drive away from all this. Let’s go out the front and loop around.”

“There’s about ten of them out there,” Frank said. “Our luck is just as good taking them head on.”

Blaze and I agreed. We moved down the hallway and into the living room. The sliding glass door leading to the backyard was destroyed. A woman leaned around the corner, getting ready to enter. She was jerked out of sight, followed by a piercing scream. For a moment she reappeared, but fell face first to the ground. As she tried to get up and crawl away, her body was pulled backward. Most of her chin and lower lip was ripped off and blood gushed from the wounds.

Blaze motioned for Frank and me to move forward. I assumed she was going to cover us. I took the left side of the opening and Frank took the right. From my new point, I could see the group outside being overrun by zombies. So far the living were winning, but once we joined the battle the tides would turn.

The woman’s body was gone. I saw her wriggling body being eaten alive by two slows. They were too engrossed to notice a man come up behind them and put a bullet in their heads. The man didn’t notice me as he dropped to his knees, sobbing over the woman.

I forced my attention away from him. He wasn’t a threat. Our Hummer was close, but it seemed painfully far away when there was a battle between us and it. It was time to take chances and ignore the danger. That Hummer was basically my livelihood. I wasn’t letting it go.

The man still worked on hotwiring it. His whole body shook visibly from the stress of chaos and a deadline. Centering his head in my iron sight was too easy. A single bullet went into the back of his head, and he slumped briefly before sliding out of the car.. My gunfire was masked by the rest.

Frank lit his cocktail and threw it near the biggest group of people, both living and dead. The glass broke and the fire spread quickly onto motorcycles and people. More screeches filled the air as the fire consumed everything in its radius.

Blaze came up and went prone in front of me, firing single shots with amazing precision. Not all of her shots hit heads, but she was killing or incapacitating people with righteous fury. From the corner of my eye, I saw her muzzle flash and the dead fell permanently, or the living join them.

“Let’s move!” I shouted once a path to the Hummer was visible.

Crackling bodies accompanied by the now familiar scent of burnt human assaulted me. Bodies dropped where Frank threw the cocktail, the wind carrying their putrid scent toward us.

Breathing through my mouth, I ran out first, making a B-line to the vehicle. However, my B-line fell apart when someone knocked me sideways into the slimy, green pool I’d been trying to avoid. Not enough time for me to grab a gulp of air, I ended up taking in a mouthful of earthy, thick water as I plunged in. Bubbles surrounded me and I couldn’t see. The chaos above water was muffled, sounded far away. Morning light filtered through the algae-laden water, putting me in a strange world of green.

This is fucking Washington! Who the hell had a below ground swimming pool here? It rained 256 days of the year, for Pete
’
s sake! On the off chance I found the blasted owners of it, I was going to put a bullet in their heads right then.

A tight grip found my ankle and dragged me down farther, pulling me to the deep end. I kicked, but it felt sluggish and ineffective under water. The heel of my boot brushed against something round, and I assumed it was a skull. I kicked again and the hand released.

Need air. Need air.

My rifle was gone, making it easier to struggle to the surface. Once my head broke the waterline, I took in a ragged breath. I’d been struggling for only a few minutes, but another dozen undead had appeared out of nowhere, eagerly trying to snag brunch.

I glanced down just in time to see a dark shape move under me and grab both my legs. This time I managed to take a breath before I was jerked back under. Taking the risk, I reached into my boot to pull out my utility knife. The zombie tried taking a chunk out of my covered foot. I felt it even through the dense boot, two rows of hard teeth.

Knife freed, I ground it into the top of his head. Blood spread out from the wound, clouding the water. I pulled out the knife and pushed from the bottom of the pool to the surface again.

No enemies congested one side of the pool, so I swam to that vicinity as fast as my sopping wet clothing would allow. Just as I was pulling myself up, a hand grabbed at my leg. Blaze showed up and caught me by the vest just as I was about to go back under. Through the water in my eyes, I saw a figure sprinting toward her.

Effortlessly, she let go of me, spinning around. She took the butt of her rifle to the head of a runner intent on taking advantage of her vulnerable position. It fell and she finished the job with another furious smash to its skull.

Blaze moved toward the Hummer and I followed her, wondering where Frank was. The fire pushed the living closer together near the Hummer, which wasn’t good for us. They took note of us as we got closer, gesturing and shouting. A few opened fire and I grabbed Blaze, pulling her into the cover of an abandoned blue Mazda. How the hell did they fit this many cars into the backyard?

A familiar, loud engine roared to life.

“Fuck.”

Blaze’s face drew into a tight grimace. I peered over the car to see the Hummer, our Hummer, crunching over dead bodies as it drove around the house. The hijackers and their team followed, shooting the trailing undead.

Some of the men and women were getting on their motorcycles and in their cars, speeding up their exit.

“Fuck!” Blaze shouted.

Frank showed up, breathless. His mouth and nose were bleeding, but other than that he was his usual self.

“We gotta get outta here. Every flesh eater in a ten mile radius must’ve heard the commotion!”

Where were we going to go? And how? I remembered the Mustang and saw it wasn’t stolen. Well, that was great. We had a useless sports car that paled in comparison to the behemoth of a Hummer.

Moans and groans caught my ear. Just because the living were gone didn’t mean we were in the clear. Zombies came from everywhere. Dead bodies twitched, getting ready to come back.

“Okay,” I said as I scrambled to my feet. “Gather up all the guns and whatever supplies are around. Put them in the Mustang. Let’s go.”

Blaze and Frank nodded then rushed about, grabbing all manner of weapons left behind. I dodged a decrepit zombie wriggling on the ground as I picked up an old shotgun.