Wake the Dead (13 page)

He raced back down the hill to stand before Shadow, trying to catch his breath as he knelt before the fence. He probed and found a gap in the wood that she would be able to slide through and he snipped approximately four foot of fencing.

He pocketed the tin snips, climbed back up the tree and pointed at the area. He grabbed the talkie and quietly spoke again. “There is a slight gap in the fence directly in front of me. Do you see that?  I think you can make your way through there.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“I can open the main gate, too, if you’d rather try to pick your way through,” Alex suggested.

“There’s no way I can make that run.”

“I agree. This way is more direct.”

“I see the gap. I can make it through there…if you can somehow get the jokers out of here,” Selina said skeptically. “That seems to be the hard part.”

“Sit tight. When you see the distraction, make for the fence and climb this tree. I’ll be back for you,” Alex stated boldly.

“Whoever you are, Alex, you’ve got some moxy. I’ll give you that,” she said. There was a short silence and she spoke again. “What should I be looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you see it…or hear it. Just do what I said. I’ll meet you back here soon enough. Just climb down and run for that gap when the zombies move.” With that, Alex climbed down, retrieved his fallen arrow, bent low to the wolf and stared him in the eyes. “Follow me, boy.”

The pair picked their way through the open area quietly and Alex closed in on the area designated as the parking lot. There was a good deal of vehicles sitting in the lot for him to pick through, neatly packed with a few missing here and there. Whenever the plague hit, all of these people must have been inside the fairgrounds. As he moved even closer to the wreckage, Alex could see more of the devastation that resulted from terrified people trying to get back onto the turnpike. Their cars were piled up, dented, burnt, and some were worse than that. It was like a domino effect of cars ramming into one another. As he observed the layout of the lot, he recognized clearly that it was an open field and if one had to get out, it would not be very difficult.

Shadow padded after Alex as he picked his way through the maze of cars until he paused and got his bearings somewhere in the middle. He avoided the few zombies who were wandering around the lot, but when he stood to check his position again, Shadow growled and leaped.

To his rear flank, a zombie had closed on him and he didn’t even hear it. Shadow pounced on it, his paws on its chest, biting at its chest as Alex removed his knife and jammed it though the zombie’s left eye. It twitched a few times and then remained still.

“Saved my ass again, Shadow.”

He began checking doors and then started looking for keys. Five cars in, he found a Chevy pickup with the keys under the visor.

“Get in, boy,” Alex said, holding the door open. “Just in case we gotta high tail it outta here.” Shadow climbed reluctantly into the truck, he rolled down the driver side window and honked the horn in one short burst. It sounded loudly, he was relieved to find, thinking this to be the one he would use.

He looked around and saw a few zombies to the north moving his way and he stood on the hood of the car, waited for one to get closer and let fly. The arrow penetrated its head and sent it away to disappear behind a vehicle. A second zombie to his right closed on him swiftly and again he nocked an arrow, exhaled, and let the arrow loose. It too, found its mark truly.

He heard that zombie hit the ground as Shadow snarled again from inside the truck, his head completely out of the partially lowered driver side window.

“What the hell are you doing?” called a man’s voice from behind him and to the left of the vehicle. Alex spun and nocked an arrow toward the sound and held it. The sun was abundant in its presence, blinding him to the source of the voice.

“That was your dumb ass that blew the horn, I’m guessing?” accused that same callous male voice.

As the source of the voice cleared the sun line and came into view, Alex could see a diminutive man with glasses leading them. He was a thin, muscular fellow with a thick head of brown hair, and he stared at Alex with a pair of beady eyes from behind his spectacles.

A woman, covered head to toe in various pieces of armor followed him. She carried a hand axe and wore a shield on her right arm, and long chestnut hair flowed from beneath a tightly fitting helm of steel. No hints of flesh escaped from beneath her armor and clothing, though Alex could see that she probably hit the gym in her day, too. Her shoulders were broad and her arms well-proportioned to match, being no ‘helpless female’ by his estimation. She could take care of herself. Her dark eyes held a reserved intelligence and a stoicism that would make a poker player proud.

Another male followed her, with grey stubble peeking through a medieval, chainmail coif, with a graying, unkempt goatee that seemed to have grown out of control. He wore a chainmail shirt, too, and carried a traditional long sword, while he held a shield strapped to his right arm. The man was burly in a mountain man sort of way, Alex summed quickly before barking a command.

“Stop right there, please,” Alex cautioned, unsure of what else to say at seeing these people. “And yes, it was me.” He stowed his bow, removed his Beretta from his belt, and leveled it at them as he chambered a round. “Look, I don’t want any trouble

“Nice pup,” said the bald man as he stared after Shadow.

“It’s not a dog, it’s a wolf. Now, I don’t have anything of use, so if you are here to rob me, I’m going to put a bullet in each one of you.”

“Easy, tiger,” said the woman, smirking at him. “We just don’t want you causing any kind of hassle for us.”

“And we’re not here to rob you,” said the little fellow with the glasses. “We’re about to head out on a supply run, and we traditionally do that with the utmost silence.”

“You live here!?” Alex asked incredulously.

The three of them looked to one another and the man wearing the glasses looked back to Alex and nodded his head.

“As I have already stated, we are staying in the castle at the far north of the fairgrounds, and are heading out to get much-needed supplies. So, if you sit out here blowing the horn, we’ve got a problem,” stated the man, bending low as if he were in physical pain during the explanation. “
And
, I just snuck these two armor-clad heathens with me through the fairground alleys and out, and that was hard enough. I don’t need you blowing the horn and waking up the dead. Literally.”

“Well, then we’ve got ourselves a big issue here. I’m trying to create a distraction to get a woman free from a couple hundred zombies. I need to get those things out and away from that woman so she can get down from a roof! She’s trapped up there! I won’t just leave her up there to die.” Alex got into the car and held the gun on the group, unflinching, as the trio exchanged glances and began to whisper among themselves just as Alex leaned on the horn.

“…begging you to stop…,” was all Alex heard over the constant blaring of the horn. They looked around with wide eyes as zombies from all over began to head their way. Alex stopped blowing the horn and stared at the trio.

“You guys should probably get in the back,” Alex said matter-of-factly as zombies ran, crawled, and stumbled toward them. Alex continued to sound the horn for another long minute. Shadow growled, and then howled in unison with it.

“You are one stupid mother—“

The sound of the horn drowned out that last accusation thankfully, and Alex began to drive the truck away, picking his way through the zombies using the spaces in between the vehicles.

“If they get close, can you use those weapons to bring them down?” Alex asked them.

 The woman holding the axe, and the man with the sword looked at each other, then back to him, and nodded confidently, the woman adding, “we’ve been doing it for months.”

 “Great. I’d rather not waste the bullets,” Alex added.

Their attention was suddenly drawn away from each other when they collectively heard a thunderous sound from behind them. Alex turned to see what happened and witnessed a large section of the gate as it collapsed under the weight of the zombie mob.

“That’s a problem,” mentioned the diminutive man in the back. “We were trying to contain them. Made them easier to hunt!” he yelled as Alex stepped on the gas a bit deeper.

“Nick’s gonna be pissed,” yelled the other man as he tapped the window of the truck with his sword.

“Sorry, man, just trying to do right by—“

“A damsel in distress,” the woman interjected, smirking at Alex despite the relative insanity of the situation. His initial summation of this woman was mistaken, as she was genuine in her joy, approving of Alex’s decision. The impassiveness was a front, he decided.

Alex ran into a pair of zombies, refocusing his attention on his task, as the undead creature bounced off the side and front of the vehicle respectively. He subsequently ran one of them over, causing everyone in the rear of the truck to stagger and then right themselves again. Then he spun the vehicle to the right, tearing up the grass in the process, as the tires could not tread against the dirt and grass very well with the zombie carcass underneath.

“Hold on!” he yelled as the truck barreled down the hill toward his rendezvous point with the sardonic woman named Selina. As the distance closed, they could see zombies racing after the vehicle from all directions. Alex drove the truck so fast that he actually distanced himself from the pursuing horde of the living dead. He glanced back in the rearview mirror and smiled as they were tripping over themselves to get after them. He stared at the gap in the fence and watched it ripple slightly. Then a boot appeared from behind and eventually, arms, a torso and the rest of Selina squeezed through the gap.

He was only a dozen paces from her when she emerged fully, still crouched low, and Alex slowed the pickup truck to a crawl. Selina glanced around and witnessed the truck closing in on her. She made to stand, but a hand—one that clearly originated from something not quite human—grasped her arm firmly.

Before Alex could reach for his gun on the dash, the man with the sword leaped from the back of the vehicle and charged toward her. As Selina tried to free herself from the vise-like grip, her footing came out from under her and she slipped.

The rest of the zombie began to emerge from the gap, blood spitting from its mouth as it anticipated consuming a long-sought-after meal. However, instead of feasting on human flesh, it met with the cold steel of a sword, which drove through its skull, stopping it—and anything else that followed—in its tracks. Selina ran and climbed into the back of the pickup, smiling slightly at Alex.

The swordsman also pulled something out of his own pack and Alex watched intently as the man knelt before the fence and quickly latched the snipped gate with a few plastic zip-ties while Alex turned the vehicle around.

He looked at Alex who waved him on and the man did just that, running and jumping into the back of the pick up just as more of the zombies closed in on them. Alex drove off hastily again and began to shout at them in the back of the vehicle.

“When I get some distance between us and them, I’m going to let the truck go! I’ve got a van parked under the trees less than a mile up the road to the east!” He gazed over at Shadow, and the wolf was surprisingly calm as the events continued to unfold.

His passengers nodded and were yelling back and forth to one another, but he could not make it out as the truck picked up speed. He hoped they had heard him well enough. The man with the glasses even went so far as to smile and give Alex the ‘thumbs up’ sign, followed by a ‘fuck you’ gesture, holding up his middle finger.

More sarcasm
, he thought. He also caught Selina’s gaze and could not tell if she held appreciation or contempt for him. The zombies bounded after them, but Alex put some distance between them and the vehicle hurriedly. He slowed it down around another thick cropping of trees and bushes and allowed the passengers to get out of the back, which they all did.

He leaned out of the window and spoke. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” They all nodded and disappeared into the tree line.

“Good luck,” Selina said to him, blowing him a kiss and shaking her head while frowning in unison.

“Christ, even more sarcasm,” Alex whispered to Shadow as he jammed on the pedal again. The horde of zombies chased after the vehicle as he zigzagged along for a good mile all the while he sounded the horn. He fished in the back and found a can of starter fluid and changed his plan right there. He wedged a screwdriver into the horn it to keep it going and slowed the vehicle to a halt at the top of a slight hill. The truck was about fifty paces from the tree line when he opened the passenger door, let shadow out and retrieved his bow and gun.

He grabbed the can of starter fluid, lit a match while inside, the cab and sprayed the flammable liquid all over the seat coverings. It burst into flames and he ran into the trees, Shadow following him.

The zombies continued to follow wildly up the hill toward the unmanned vehicle, which was now on fire and still sounding the horn, while Alex led Shadow into the shade of the trees. The tree line was on the same side as where he had let the others out, only his van was quite a distance southeast of where he was now, he guessed. He carefully picked his way through the trees and shrubbery, looking back to make sure they were not being followed. He saw nothing except the blaze against the horizon, growing brighter as time passed, accompanied by the waning sounds of the horn as the distance between them grew. He wondered how these people would come to treat him and, more importantly, how they would react to Shadow and vice versa.

As he picked his way through the trees and shrubbery there, Shadow followed lazily behind. Alex tucked the gun back in his belt, adjusted the items to a more comfortable place over his shoulder, and removed his trusty bow and an arrow from the quiver, holding it in his right hand, ready to nock it. It was smooth going at first as no zombies followed them directly.

A few hundred paces in however, he came across a pair of the undead, moving toward him, or rather toward the source of the sound in the distance behind him, which was still going. Shadow made for the first one, growling and then launching his body atop it, pinning it down and tearing at flesh as it tried to fight back.

Alex could not get off a bowshot as it closed the distance too quickly.

Stupid! Getting used to fighting the slow ones
, he thought as he recognized in horror that this thing had recently fed. It charged toward him with incredible speed, slapped his bow away, and it as he backed further away from it, he stumbled to the ground. The zombie fell over him, spitting blood from its mouth and clawing at him, trying to get at his flesh.

Alex instinctively grasped a fallen branch nearby and tried to work it into the zombie’s mouth as it scratched at him. Alex managed to maneuver it into the mouth and followed it up with an elbow to the throat, which was instinct…and useless.

Of course, this thing had no vital organs to target, rendering a great deal of his martial arts knowledge impractical. The zombies had no nerves, felt no pain and pursued their victim even with a broken leg, which is something he had seen in the past. No advantages of his trained targeting would help against these inhuman abominations.

As he tried to maneuver the powerful creature off him, he noted that the zombie’s fingers had claws at the end—something he had not noted on any of the previous ones. Perhaps it was unique to this particular zombie, or perhaps it was something altogether new.

Are they evolving?
he wondered, recoiling in unison as the zombie snapped the branch in two with its bite. Alex repositioned the remaining half and tried to use it to hold it off, pushing up and trying to put some distance between him and the zombie so that he could try to fish his knife out of the sheath. But it was taking all of his concentrated efforts just to keep the thing from tearing out portions of his own flesh.

He recalled with a wince, the pain of the first bite he ever felt from one of these bastards on his left leg. Luckily, it had not torn away any flesh before Alex put a bullet in that one’s brain.

He heard the sounds of snarling,
inhuman
sounds and the struggle that ensued out of his line of sight between Shadow and the other, presumably recently-fed, zombie and hoped the wolf fared well. He heard the sickening sound of something entering flesh and thought the worst, that maybe the zombie had stabbed the wolf….