Hissers II: Death March (18 page)

“I don’t
know. I’m not really religious.” Especially not after meeting Harold and his zealot clan. “I just don’t want to keep living in this kind of world. Today it’s my hair, but tomorrow it might be my legs, or even my life.”

“Don’t sweat it
. Your hair is so cute I’d enter you into a pageant if I could.”

She looked him up and down, saw cuts on his face, graying stubble around his mouth and nose
, and deep black circles around his eyes. “Fuck, Doug! How
did
you find me? How did you survive? I saw you get swarmed.”

“Just went a little nuts, I guess. First set of teeth came down on the guitar, not on me. Then I threw some kicks and punches—used to play football, you know—and they went down. Swung that guitar at them like a plane propeller. Juked them a few time
s and went back down into the cellar—”

“
But there were more in the cellar!”

“Don’t I know it. But I grabbed a shovel and swung at them and…” He hesitated a moment, looking her in the eyes. “Man
, this ain’t no fun memory to describe.”

“
I cut a severed head out of a car engine, Doug, I can take it. Go on.”

“Well, I chopped their heads off. A shovel to the head knocks ’em down, a swing to the head cuts the neck, a kick severs it.” At these words he seemed to linger in his own mind for a minute. Amanita assumed he had never beheaded anyone before, even if they were zombies. She supposed it wasn’t something anyone ever really got used to.

“I held two against me. Dead ones. Like body armor. Backed into the laundry room and locked the door. I could just barely hear tires screeching and then I heard them things take off, chasing whatever car it was. So I risked it, ran upstairs, out the front door, and I see a van coming around the corner. I waved to them for help but they blazed past me. The driver could have gotten me, but he didn’t, and I thought that was pretty rude. So I ran to the next house, hid in the garage, looking through the windows at the street. The hissers, most of ’em anyway, were all chasing that van, but it was too fast for them. And by then they were way down the road and moving off to find other prey. So I stayed there, watching the remaining stragglers amble about, wondering how I was gonna get out and find you, praying you had made it somewhere safe.

“Eventually, an army helicopter flew over
head and I watched the hissers go after it, heads all cocked up to the sky.”

“They didn’t smell you
before the copter came?”

“No. But I saw them licking the air like snakes, and I think they were trying to get my scent or something. But there were a couple cat litter boxes in the garage
, and quite possibly dead cats as well, and it stank to high hell so I think they were confused or something. Anyway, later on that van came back and started moving real slow up the street, like they were looking for something. I snuck out and followed, and when they stopped I jumped in front of them and yelled for them to hold up. They rolled down the window and I asked for a ride. They said no. I said, ‘Fair enough.’ I asked if they had an extra gun and again they said no. Then I asked if they’d seen a teenage girl and they said no again, but this time the way they said it was all wrong. See, that’s the trick to catching a liar. You learn how they tell the truth so you can catch their differences when they lie. I knew right then and there they’d seen you, so I yanked the driver’s door open and I pulled him outside. His buddy got out and ran around to hit me but I laid him flat. Then I took that driver and I looked in his eyes and said if he knew where you were he’d better tell me, ’cause in two seconds I was gonna knock his teeth out.”

“You should have.”

“Believe me I wanted to. But I didn’t want to knock him out before he told me where you were.”

Amanita rubbed her short hair, a nervous sort of tic
now. “They said they were looking for something. And Harold said he’d give them something in return.”

“Yeah, I found that out soon enough. They were looking for kids. Seems old Harold shoots blanks, and them kids aren’t even his. He kidnapped them when they were babies. That was the key, according to
the one with the spider on his neck. They had to be babies.”

“So he could raise them his way without them knowing. What a piece of shit.”

“Yeah, and too bad too. Them kids was brainwashed long ago. Before this whole epidemic even happened. Ain’t no saving them. He just figured it’d be easier now, with all the mass confusion, to build his family even bigger. And in return for kidnapping, them two scums doing the ’napping got paid in meth or some such drug, which Harold also taught his kids to make. The bastard was as evil a cult leader as they come.”

Amanita remembered the tiny lab in the cabin. Now it made sense. At least in a twisted, disgusting sort of way.
“And he was gonna marry me off and impregnate me because they couldn’t find any babies.”

“Something like that,” Doug said. “Sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

“You got there, Doug, that’s all that matters. So where do we go now?”

“Well….I suppose we keep going west.”

“Well, first things first.”

“What’
s that, Am?”

She poked him. “Pull my finger.”

Friday, 11:05 PM

“Move move move!” Olive shouted as she dug her oar into the water and rowed for all she was worth.
Connor matched her speed on the other side. The little boat picked up momentum and surged forward, but the spider monsters behind them were gaining.

“It’s too shallow,” Connor
cried. “We’re not gonna be able to outrow their running. We have to jump to the shore.”

“No, keep rowing.” Olive threw her oar down
, spun back over the stern and aimed her rifle, fired off two shots. The first hit a random middle-aged man’s head on the beast, blowing out the back of its skull. The head went limp, deflated and cored out like a giant popped zit. The second shot missed as the boat rocked on the waves. “Shit.”

Connor spun around to meet the creatures
just as their multiple appendages clamored for a hold on the boat. His oar came down with an echoing crunch as it hit the snarling face of a middle-aged woman. Feeling no pain, the creature swung at him with three arms. Olive kicked it in its massive chest and it stumbled in the water. The other two creatures came up around it like dogs fighting for a bone and lashed out at her just as she fell backwards. The half dozen arms and legs grasping for her caught nothing but air.

Connor wracked his brain for a tactical solution. If it were a game he’d let his enemy get close
and blowing up the both of them. It’d be a victory only in death. He didn’t have dynamite or plasma grenades, though, or anything often found in video games. All he had was two shots left. The best he could do was take out one random spider head and then himself. It wouldn’t stop the beast, but at least he’d go out knowing he wasn’t coming back as a monster. Let it get close and take it out. Always go down swinging, right?

He drew his gun and waited for the monsters to swipe again. When the next set of hands reached for him, he fired and took out the eye of an African American woman. The head dangled like rotted fruit on a branch. He looked at Olive, who was re
-cocking her rifle, and prayed she had more ammo left than he did.

“I’m out,” she said, and swung the rifle at the beasts in the water.

All Connor could think about were his parents as he looked at his gun, scared to death of how much it would hurt to pull the trigger against his temple. He had wanted to so badly to see if the drive in his pocket held any answers, but now he would never know. Just before he put the pistol against his head, the three hissing arachnid abominations disappeared under the water with a splash.

All was silent, save for Olive’s heaving breaths beside him. It took a second before she could find her voice. “Where the hell did they go?”

Trembling, Connor looked over the side of the boat. “Down there.”

The boat h
ad hit some kind of channel. Some ten feet below them, the spider monsters crawled on the river’s muddy floor, just barely lit by a few rays of moonlight. Dozens of white, pasty heads looked up at them, snarling and hissing. Connor could just barely hear them, even though there were no air bubbles escaping, which defied everything biological about the mechanics of hissing underwater. But the Devil probably didn’t care about the rules, he thought.

The boat
stopped.

“What the…?” Olive sounded frantic.

The boat was stuck against collection of fallen tree trunks and brambles that had formed a makeshift damn in the middle of the water. Too bad it didn’t stretch to either bank or they could climb on and walk to land. But why would they ever have such luck? Connor tried to kick off of it but the current, as mild as it was, was keeping them in place.

Olive looked at Connor. She was shaking, wet, scared, and a cut above her eye was bleeding. Connor pointed to it.
“Got scratched?” It was all he could get out.

She put her hand to it, looked at the blood. “
Don’t give me that look. I hit myself with the oar. Nothing touched me but me.”

Connor hoped this was true. He didn’t want to have to shoot Olive. She was the only person in the world he had left, even if
he didn’t know her that well.

“We’re stuck,” he said, glancing around to the river banks to get an asse
ssment of the situation. The edges of the river were a good fifty feet off to either side. Not a tremendous distance, but enough to influence a plan other than swimming; if they swam too slow the things under the water might be able to jump up and snag them. If he was on his bike, and had a good start, he was sure he could jump it from here. But he hadn’t seen his bike since the day he and Seth had gone to the 7-Eleven, which felt like a lifetime ago.

In the darkness, Olive tapped him. “We have company.”

Like a polaroid developing, new figures came out of the black woods around them and gathered on the edges of the river. Hundreds of the undead, snarling and glaring at them. Some of them continued on into the water, just walked right in, and sank beneath the surface, flailing as they struggled to stay afloat, ultimately joining their monstrous brethren on the river bottom. The others just stood on the banks and swayed and gnashed their teeth and reached out with their arms and legs and whatever new body parts now doubled as their hands.

“
There’s no way out unless we swim.” Olive’s voice broke as she realized the tenuous predicament they were in. “Can you swim?”

Connor looked up, saw the tree branches overhead and wondered if he could
somehow get on her shoulders and grab them. No, he realized, they were too high up, and besides, that would leave Olive alone on the boat. He looked farther down the river, following the current, then looked down into the water over the side of the boat and saw hundreds of pale, barely visible faces looking up at him through the murk. “Yeah, I can swim. But can we outswim them? What if they jump from the banks at us? They can take us down no problem.”

“Kid, I don’t think we have a choice.” She kicked at the brambles to prove her point.
The raft wouldn’t move. It was locked up.

He stuck his gun with its single bullet in the lone backpack they now carried.
He couldn’t even remember what was in there anymore. “On three?”

Olive
dropped her gun. It was useless without bullets and would just slow her down now.  “Look at me, kid. Look at me. If we get separated, if something happens to me, don’t you wait for me, just get out and run and go hide. You hear me?”

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want to, but this isn’t a school water polo match. You just make sure you keep running if that happens. I’m hoping it doesn’t, of course. I’m not trying to sound like Mother Teresa or anything. Just fucking say yes.”

Connor nodded, the sense of
urgency growing stronger as even more dark shapes appeared on the river banks. He checked to make sure the backpack was secure on him, then climbed onto the felled logs. Olive climbed up next to him. Together they looked down and saw dozens of undead beneath the water, reaching up, their hands perhaps only two feet from the surface.

“Jump headfirst,” Connor suggested. “We’ll get farther underwater if we dive.”

“Kid, I’m gonna jump to the Pacific if I can. Ready?”

“No.”

“Me either.” She grabbed him and hugged him.

He buried his head against her chest, her wet shirt
sticking to his face. She was shivering but her soft flesh was somehow still comforting to him. He knew it was an inappropriate thought, but for some reason right there he wanted to kiss her. He knew he was too young, and she looked at him as just a kid, but he also knew he was developing real feelings for her. Not just as a teenager would for any attractive stripper he’d see in a magazine, but as someone he needed in his life now.

Or maybe he was just scared to death and didn’t want to die without feeling loved.

She pushed him back, looked into his eyes. “Okay, kid, let’s go!”