Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World (21 page)

For an hour, they followed the road, but
always remained hidden in the brush. The way was slow going, but
the chance of being seen was minimal.

Brian finally brought them to a halt as
exhaustion began to set in.

Brian was making a decent showing of going
slowly to allow time for Mrs. Deneaux to keep up, but the evidence
of Brian’s infection was on his face. His complexion had paled
considerably and sweat dripped from his features, though the
weather or the exertion didn’t merit it.

“You look worse than I feel,” Mrs. Deneaux
said as she sat on a small stump.

“Holy shit,” Paul said, finally taking notice
of his walking partner. “Let me see your wound.”

“I’m fine,” Brian said, swaying slightly in a
non-existent breeze.

Paul cautiously pulled Brian’s shirt up; deep
red lines radiated out from the entry wound in Brian’s stomach. “We
need to get you some meds,” Paul said.

“How could he be sick so fast?” Mrs. Deneaux
asked.

“What do you mean? He got shot,” Paul said
with some heat.

“I understand that. But he shouldn’t already
be showing these signs of infection. It takes at least one or two
days to get those symptoms. Something else is going on here.”

Paul stepped back, Brian’s shirt fell back in
place. Brian felt like decisions were being made regarding him, but
fever was beginning to cloud his judgment and all he wanted to do
right now was lie down.

“Sergeant Wamsley reporting for duty,” Brian
said as he went to the ground, mostly under his own power. Paul
placed his head on a small patch of moss.

“He’s burning up. We need to get him some
help,” Paul said.

“I think it’s too late,” Mrs. Deneaux said
coolly, finally getting to light her smoke up.

“What are you saying?”

“You can’t really be that dense, can you? I
really would have thought Michael would have a better screening
method for his friends.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that and you’ll
explain to me what I’m apparently missing.”

“He’s dying, and fast, from the looks of it,”
she said, taking a large drag off her cigarette.

“We just need to get him some pills and he’ll
be fine.”

“Nothing short of a medical team and a blood
transfusion are going to save him now, but I’ll allow you your
fantasy.”

“You’ll allow me? How fucking considerate!”
Paul shouted.

“I’m wondering if he’s turning into a
zombie,” Mrs. Deneaux pondered, completely ignoring Paul’s
outburst.

Paul couldn’t help himself, but he moved from
his protective stance next to Brian to one in which he had a better
angle to see if any change had taken place.

“I see that you think that too,” Deneaux
laughed.

“I didn’t, until you said it. We need to go
get him something to help,” Paul said, fear fighting bile to be the
first to root itself firmly in his throat.

“We? I think not. I’ll only slow you down and
someone should stay here to keep watch over him,” Deneaux said,
pointing to the prone figure of Brian with her cigarette holding
finger.

Paul doubted her sincerity on the whole
“keeping watch” part, but she was slower than a three-legged
tortoise racing in molasses when it came to walking through the
woods. “I’m not even sure where we are,” Paul said with some rising
alarm. The thought of going out on his own was not sitting well.
Paul looked all around, the trees suddenly looking very
constricting.

“You can wait a few more hours until he dies.
Then we can leave here together, dearie,” Deneaux said, completely
catching Paul’s anxiety attack.

Paul trudged out of the woods and onto the
roadway, trying his best to gauge their location. It would do no
good to get what he needed only to find out he didn’t know his way
back.

Paul heard Mrs. Deneaux cycle a round into
her rifle. He fully expected to hear the shot ring out as she “took
care” of Brian’s illness.
And would that be so bad?
he
thought.
Mrs. D was probably right, he was already a dead
man
. “And now I’m risking my life for him,” Paul muttered,
stopping his forward progress. “He’d do the same for me. I think,”
he said, going again.

“Twit,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she watched
Paul’s conscience at work. “He’s as dead as this one,” she said as
she casually kept the rifle pointed at Brian’s head.

She wasn’t overly concerned with her future
survival. She was a survivor, always had been and she saw no reason
why that would change now. She would give Paul two or three hours
at the most to get what he needed and get back. If he wasn’t here,
she was going to seek out a more hospitable location to spend the
night and the next morning she would resume her search for Michael.
Nothing ensured her continued existence more than staying with the
penultimate survivor.

The only flaw she saw in Michael was his
commitment to others, although that would work in her favor this
time because he would not leave until he had the rest of his
raiding party with him.

Brian stirred restlessly in his fever-soaked
dreams, Mrs. Deneaux pushed his shirt up to watch the ever
advancing infection as it branched to his heart. Once it got there,
nothing could save him, except a priest and that would only be his
eternal soul.

Paul felt completely exposed as he walked
down the road. He looked longingly to the brush-covered street
sides, but time was of the utmost importance. He hesitated.
Who
would know if I turned around now? I could tell Deneaux I didn’t
find anything. She’d suspect and I’d know,
he thought,
chastising himself.

Paul had started walking again when he got a
creeping sensation at the back of his neck. It was that same
feeling he got so long ago at the gas station when that man had
begun to approach him, when this whole thing had originally
started. He had ignored that feeling then and almost fell into the
same trap. “I’m going to be pissed if I turn around and there’s
nothing there, I’m just scaring myself,” he said aloud much like
people who enter a dark basement whistle so as to abate their
fear.

At first, what he saw just didn’t register.
Luckily, his lower reasoning abilities of survival kicked in. Two
speeders, a large male and an even larger female, were bearing down
on him. Paul involuntarily cried out as he began his own sprint.
Cognitive thought slowly came back as Paul tried to do some basic
calculations in his head.
Had to have at least a couple of
hundred yards head start on them, should I turn around and look? No
I’ll lose time.
He could swear on more than one occasion, he
could feel fingernails narrowly miss his neck and he would put on
another short burst of speed.

He had gone less than a quarter mile and knew
his time of running was rapidly coming to a close.
“Can’t…keep…this…up!” He huffed. He stole a quick glance over his
shoulder, hoping the zombies had stopped their pursuit. No such
luck, the lead zombie dressed in tattered camouflage gear was, at
the most, twenty feet away.

I’m screwed
, Paul thought.
Okay,
okay
. His mind going into overdrive.
What would Talbot
do?
Even in the dire situation, he smiled a little at the
comparison to the popular What Would Jesus Do? slogan. Paul held
his rifle up to his face, not sure what he was looking for or if
he’d even be able to tell as the firearm swayed violently back and
forth in his field of vision.
I think I see red. Does that mean
the safety is on or off? How many bullets do I have? What are the
odds I could hit him with the rifle over my shoulder, about as good
as you stopping and aiming
. He swore he heard Mike say that
last part.

Paul planted his left leg to turn and make a
shot, the force of his forward momentum causing his ankle to roll.
He fell and spun hard from the pain. Camo man had not broken stride
as Paul rolled over two complete times. Tears had already welled up
in Paul’s eyes as the Camo man lunged for him. Paul pulled the
trigger of his rifle. He couldn’t have placed the shot any better
if he had put the rifle on a gun stand and fired it off. The bullet
struck Camo man squarely in the forehead. The zombie’s forward
progress halted immediately as brackish, gray-green matter leaked
out the entry hole, and the smell of sulfur-laden, stagnant water
assailed his nostrils. Paul’s triumph was short-lived as the
Amazonian woman who had been struggling to keep up was now gaining
by leaps and bounds on the prostrate Paul.

Paul sat up to get a better shot, the pain in
his ankle throbbing with every beat of his heart, which at this
moment, meant it was pretty much a continuous pain. “Gotcha now,
bitch!” Paul screamed as his well placed shot slammed the woman in
her calf. Her immeasurable bulk slammed to the ground as the bottom
half of her right leg snapped in two.

The zombie woman landed on her face, and her
teeth broke out as she made hard contact with the ground. As she
rose, Paul noticed white jagged pieces of her shattered incisors
poking through her bottom lip like shards of glass used on top of
rock walls. She looked in sorry shape, but yet she rose. Paul sat
there, watching her in stunned silence as she got to her feet. Her
knee-high skirt did little to hide the hideous sight Paul was
gazing at. The zombie advanced slowly, her left foot landing
normally on her sneaker-clad appendage, her right foot and a full
six inches of her lower leg folded away at a ninety degree angle as
it came down. Paul could hear the bones in her leg as she cut
through her calf muscles and made contact with the pavement. The
sound was mind-numbingly sickening. It sounded like a wet fish
being slapped down on a marble table, Paul was mesmerized with the
horror of it. The zombie cared little for the irreparable damage
she was committing as she approached. Blood spurted from the veins
and arteries in her leg as she ripped through the tender
vessels.

Paul pulled up his rifle, realizing at this
distance even he would have a hard time missing. He pulled the
trigger, or more correctly “tried” to pull the trigger. He was not
even rewarded with the satisfaction of a dry fire. He tried the
trigger again, nothing. He turned the rifle over, an expended brass
cartridge was lodged half in and half out of his rifle. Paul pulled
back repeatedly on his bolt, the piece would not move and Stumpy
was gaining.

Paul turned over and used his gun as a
makeshift cane to prop himself up. He thought sourly that this
would be the time it shot, while it was firmly entrenched in his
armpit.
How many horror movies have I seen like this?
Paul
asked himself as he limped away, the injured zombie nearly on his
heels. His ankle was swelling. He could feel it testing out the
boundaries of the boot he was wearing. If he took it off now, he’d
be lucky if he could get a sock to stretch over it.

Paul nearly spilled a second time as he
paused to look over his shoulder. Stumpy was losing ground and
height as she continually splintered the bone in her calf.
A
little while longer and she’ll be down to her knee
, Paul
thought.
Would she keep trying to walk with an exaggerated
swaying gait? Or would she drop to her knees and come after him
that way?
Paul really didn’t want to wait, fearful that at any
moment, he would run into another zombie, and with no other weapons
than an unwieldy club, he wisely decided that confrontation would
not be in his best interests.

It was another two hundred yards before
Stumpy fell over. Paul heard the thud and possibly a low soft moan,
of that he was not sure. The zombie opted for the crawling mode of
transportation. Paul was relieved; the savage pain in his ankle was
impeding his forward progress. He could slow his pace down now, he
was in much less danger from her now than he had been moments
earlier, but he was still a long way away from safe.

When Paul pulled his gaze from his traveling
companion, he realized that he was on the fringes of a residential
area. The house on his immediate left had been abandoned long
before the zombies had come. Signs warning of danger and to not
trespass were displayed prominently on the front door. It looked to
Paul like the only thing holding the house up was force of
habit.

The house on the right did not look much
better, but as of yet, had not been officially condemned. He
thought about going into that house, but it looked eerily similar
to a house that a young couple had gotten trapped in, in some
zombie movie Mike had made him watch. Paul was under the impression
that if a movie didn’t star Charles Bronson, it wasn’t much worth
watching. He had suffered through it to appease Mike, but mostly
because Tracy had made some unbelievably good queso dipping sauce
and he had brought with him a near insatiable case of the
munchies.

He limped further down the road. The next
house on his left looked like it could stop half the Mexican army.
And if they couldn’t get in, what would be his odds?

“I’m going to the next one,” Paul said as he
turned to look at his pursuer. Her arms and hands were bloodied,
but yet she still came. “It’d be way cooler if you’d stop,” Paul
told her, but she paid him no heed.

The next house had some promise, scary
promise, but promise all the same. The front door was intact,
however, it was wide open. That was not a common sight these days.
“Well,” Paul reasoned, “whatever got in at least had a way out.”
That reasoning held sway with a zombie, but if humans had ransacked
it, little of any value would be left for Paul to use. “At this
point all I want is a chair and two aspirins. That would be just
about the best thing I could think of right now. Twenty-four
Mapledog Lane it is,” Paul said as he made way for the door. Stumpy
changed her course to match Paul. “I’ll get us some tea ready,”
Paul told her.