LZR-1143: Evolution (22 page)

“I knew you were going to side with him! I told him not to go. I told him I needed him, and he should never have left me alone inside! I told him to stay here, and now you’re leaving me too!”

She walked down several steps, fist raised to the night sky.

Almost as one, the twenty creatures turned their heads.

Slowly, in unison, they turned from their slow plod toward the shed and toward Leigh’s furious form. She started screaming again, and they quickened their shuffling pace.

“You came for my wedding! Mine! Not his! If you think that I’ll ... Hey! Get the fuck back, you sick ... shit!”

She had noticed the en masse redirection and was backing up the stairs, frightened and furious.

“Run!” I shouted to her, realizing that her avenues for escape were narrowing, even as Kate and I ran toward the truck. Neither of us took a shot, afraid that we might hit her if we missed.

Instead, she backed up, eyes staring at the creatures approaching, transfixed; her hand searched blindly for the doorknob behind her. The first of the creatures had reached the foot of the stairs, and was stepping forward, hand reaching out hungrily.

Leigh’s hand scraped against the wood until it reached the knob, and she quickly turned to the door and twisted it.

Suddenly, she screamed in rage.

The door was locked.

She turned to the closest creature, just as its head snapped forward, blood erupting from its skull. Kate was staring down the barrel of her rifle, lining up another shot and firing at the next closest creature, missing and sending a bullet into the wooden siding of the house.

She had taken the chance and gotten lucky.

But now we were on the clock. Half of the zombies turned toward us as we closed the distance, and I heard surprised yelling and the revving of several engines from the front road. We sprinted the last few yards, and I tore open the driver’s side door of the Ford, as Kate yelled at Leigh to run. They were thick around her now, and she stood, frozen at the top of the steps.

I slammed the door and hammered the key into the ignition, intending to plow into several of them if I had the time to reach her.

But I didn’t.

The first creature reached for her dress, tearing a large swatch from the long train. She heard the tear, screaming in rage as she pummeled the upturned rotten face with a small fist. The creature took the blow in the face but raised a dirty hand, seizing the fist as it returned and shoving the hand into its mouth quickly and urgently. She screamed in pain as it took her fingers with yellowed and broken teeth, blood spraying thickly against the creature’s face.

Several others grabbed the dress from the rear and tore down brutally, tearing it from her body and causing them to fall forward into her. The top of the garment fell uselessly against the intact waist, and the creatures from the bottom step fell into the extensive train, tearing and shredding in their search for flesh.

Those at the top of the stairs had found it.

Her exposed torso revealed the extent of her malnourishment. Her ribs were tight against her pale skin, and her breasts limp and sallow on her chest. Hands tore at the white flesh, and she screamed. Whether in pain, or fury at the destruction of her dress, I wasn’t sure.

I turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

The first zombie tore into her wrist, rotten hands separating the two bones of the arm with a loud crack, then slowly moving up the arm with exploring hands and a hungry mouth.

I shifted the gearshift to the drive position, and released the brake. The radio poured static into the cabin.

Three zombies slid their fingers into the exposed flesh of her back and quickly and violently tore her open from behind, ripping her skin along the spine and digging hands into the cavity of her torso. She screamed again.

This time, the scream was one of pain.

Kate slammed her hand into the radio’s knob, killing the noise. I pressed the accelerator.

Four creatures rose from the bottom steps and ripped the dress from the bottom up, exposing scarred and dirty legs. They pulled the legs toward their open mouths, and the wrenching crack of breaking bones shattered the night. She screamed again as she fell to the cement, and it ended in a wet cough, even as another hand reached for her face, covering her mouth and drawing her head down in the cruel semblance of a loving embrace.

A small tear escaping from my eye, I drove through the creatures in the back of the crowd, sending them careening forward and crushing several beneath the oversized tires.

I turned up the driveway and toward the road.

Chapter 23

There were two trucks and a large, older model American car in various positions at the end of the driveway. The car’s roof had been removed to accommodate a shooter, and the trucks each had reinforced roll-bars, with machine guns mounted to the apex. At least twenty men stood in a rough line across the driveway, slowly moving toward the back yard.

As we turned the corner into the driveway, the men scattered, yelling at us and each other. The car and trucks were parked far enough apart to allow us to roar through, and I did just that, skidding slightly in the gravel at the end of the road as we turned west again, toward town.

Behind us, the crackle of gunfire exploded and we both ducked our heads as bullets slammed into the bed of the truck, and several shots shattered the glass behind us; a second volley shattered the windshield. Specks of shattered glass rained into the cab as I drove by instinct until we were out of range and I couldn’t hear any more shots.

I raised my head and slowed slightly, taking the time to drag my pistol over the remnants of glass in the windshield and keep any more shards from flying in as we sped toward town.

“Check the map,” I yelled to Kate over the rush of air through the exposed front.

“We need to get around the town! Clearly these assholes are not going to be forming a welcoming committee!”

She leaned forward, peering at the map on the floor to keep the wind from tearing it from her grasp.

She looked up several times and back to the map. Behind us, lights had appeared on the road from following vehicles. Reluctantly, I switched the lights of the truck off to conceal us if we made a turn. As I slowed to accommodate the lack of light, the pursuers started gaining on us.

In the distance, ahead of us, two lights ignited on the narrow road.

Headlights, coming toward us.

“Shit,” I said. “We have company coming from the front. Anything?”

She slammed the map into the floor and looked up. “No side roads coming up. Either we stay on this one into town, or we take our chances with small roads that might not be on the map.”

I slowed even more, squinting into the darkness for the outline of a road sign, or a stop sign, or anything distinguishable. In the thick darkness of a moonless night, it was impossible.

“We’ve got to ditch the truck,” I said, pulling to the side of the road. Behind us, the pursuers’ lights were bright on the road. In front of us, the headlights were gaining fast.

Kate agreed, realizing that we didn’t know the area well enough to find a way out, and it would be easier to hide without the truck. I cursed at the delay as we were forced to abandon the wheels, but had no alternative. We couldn’t outshoot twenty men in three vehicles.

I turned the truck into a corn field, plowing through dead stalks until we had gone fifty feet. Hoping that they would miss the gap in the dead crops when they drove by, we hopped out and moved west, away from the truck, but continuing to parallel the road.

We heard the oncoming vehicle drive by first. It was moving slowly, and roared by going east. It had the sound of a large engine and vehicle, and my mind flashed to the school bus I thought I had seen earlier.

It was slow going, moving through the corn in the dark, but we were fairly sure it would be more difficult to follow us and find us on foot than it would be by truck.

The convoy from the house drove by soon after the large vehicle, but at high speed. They hadn’t noticed the tracks into the corn, which meant that we probably had until daybreak before they retraced their path and found the truck.

So we had that much time to find a way around the town.

We stopped briefly to check the map. We were still at least a mile outside the town, but were going to start reaching populated areas soon. To avoid the bulk of the town, we would have to detour roughly five miles to the North, on foot. Although the best option would be to find another vehicle, we didn’t think it wise to conduct that search in the dark, while angry townsfolk were combing the area for us. So we resigned to find a safe place to sleep after several hours of walking, then resume the search for transportation in the morning.

The corn seemed never to end. Acre upon acre, sometimes divided by ditches or fencing, stretched into the night air. I still shivered at the memory of Leigh’s demise, and renewed my personal vow to stop this madness if I could. I listened to Kate behind me as we picked our way through the tall stalks and marveled again at her strength and beauty. If I had a child on the other side of the country, under these circumstances, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to function. Yet she was a rock in the midst of chaos.

I thought I might love her for that.

I stopped walking as the thought hit me, and behind me her footfalls approached. Her hand was on my shoulder, and she asked softly, “What’s up? Time to stop?”

I simply shook my head, turning and smiling at her dirty, beautiful face.

“No, not yet. Just ... realizing something.”

She smiled back and then gestured forward, throwing back to me as she took the lead, “Good then; let’s go. Race ya to the next coffee shop.”

Letting the sudden warmth I felt take over, I simply walked forward, following.

We walked for two hours. After the first hour, the corn fields ended, graduating into fallow fields, devoid of crops. Although we couldn’t see the road we were paralleling, the tree line on the far side was fairly clear in the moonlight. We crossed a small dirt road as we moved west, and decided to follow it in the hopes of finding a barn or a small house, hopefully abandoned and zombie-free. If the last few experiences with the undead were any indication, they did indeed seem to be traveling and congregating as groups. This was bad news when they found you, but rendered decent odds on finding larger swaths of land deserted.

The road wound through farm land, more corn on one side, empty fields on the other. We stayed close to the corn so our silhouettes weren’t so clear against the moonlit background. Although the creatures didn’t see very well, humans would be especially vigilant for ambling forms in the darkness, and I didn’t feel like an extra bullet hole.

When I saw Kate stumble on a large clod of dirt, I knew we needed to stop for the night soon. In the distance, a single building stood. Alone and dark, it was the only evidence of human habitation in the vicinity. We sped up, eager to find shelter and the scant safety of a roof and walls.

As we approached, we were relieved to discover that it was a fairly decrepit home, with a large barn in the back and a deserted driveway. The front door waved in the wind, and a discarded suitcase lay open in the front yard. Clothing still hung on the tattered line in the side yard, and the large form of what appeared to be a long-dead farm animal lay close to the post and rail fence lining the property.

Although my body was begging me to sleep, my stomach was speaking louder. We hadn’t eaten for what seemed like years, and it seemed that our newfound strength came with a metabolic price. I didn’t think I had ever been so hungry.

I flicked on the flashlight I had scavenged from the Humvee, and Kate followed me silently to the open front door. I gasped briefly as a rat scurried into the house from the porch, and cursed my first reaction.

You are some action hero, weren’t you, I thought. I could hear the voice of the hardened drill sergeant who had prepped me for my last military film.

“You can’t make a cake without killing Charlie,” he would say.

Or maybe that wasn’t right.

It didn’t sound right.

Maybe there were eggs involved. Or you had to break an egg with Charlie?

Crap, I was tired.

Kate nudged me forward and I started out of the daze, crossing the threshold and panning the flashlight through the living room. It was a simple one-level farmhouse, and the living room opened into the kitchen in the rear, separated from one another by a waist-high partition. To the left, a hallway led into what I assumed were the bedrooms. Kate pealed off to that side of the house as I cautiously moved past the partition and into the kitchen, making sure to pay attention to the darker corners in the back of the home.

Barely a minute later, she emerged from the back of the house and shook her head.

“Empty,” she said simply, raising her hand to her neck and rubbing it briefly before passing her hand over her eyes.

I breathed a sigh of relief and started opening cabinets.

“I’ll get the steak, if you can find some potatoes,” I said absently, rooting through baking soda, dish soap and cheap metal silverware. I opened a second cabinet as I heard her open the fridge.

“Oh, Jesus ...” she said, before slamming the door again.

I chuckled.

“Yeah, can’t think that a couple weeks of rot helped whatever lived in there before, huh?”

“Smells like roadkill,” she said, laughing in exhaustion.

“Wrapped in crap,” I added.

We laughed together as we searched the cabinets. The search was coming up dry until she opened the full-length vertical cabinet next to the fridge. Several cans of canned stew, a box of diet soda, an unopened bag of corn chips, and the freaking motherlode: two bottles of red wine.

Cheap? Yep.

Disgusting? Most likely.

Welcome? Oh dear lord.

You try surviving a zombie holocaust without a drink someday and see how you like it. I was about ready to tap a battery and suck the acid through a garden hose.