Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (13 page)

After leaving the city limits, I gave the reins a sharp, left-handed yank and turned Daisy off the road. Mia and Jake followed right behind as I led them across the countryside. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and I was hoping we might put some distance between ourselves and our pursuers over the rough and uneven ground. We were a mile away and I could already see the towering perimeter fence of the prison beyond the trees. The shrieks behind us seemed to fade. I looked over my shoulder and was relieved to see we had given ourselves a little breathing room. The runners were falling behind. Not by much, but enough.

We were a few hundred feet out by the time I could plainly make out the guards at the outer fence gate. They saw us about the same time and started hustling to slide the gate back. The inside gate was already open, with six more guards standing ready with their weapons raised and aimed directly at us.

“Let’s go!” I shouted to Jake and Mia.

Kicking the horses into a run, we bolted through the partially opened outside gate, then through the inside gate, showing no signs of recognition to the guards. I started reining Daisy in, slowing her stride and sliding off before she’d even come to a full stop.

“Get him inside, now!” I gestured towards the prison. Jake rode on, Zack bouncing around violently in his lap.

Mia pulled Zack’s horse to a stop next to me and jumped off, already ramming a fresh clip into place and striding towards the fence. I checked my pistol—still half a clip—and hurried to follow her. The runners were slamming themselves against the outside gate and fence, snarling and screaming at the guards inside. One of them was talking on his radio. I assumed he outranked the others, because he gave the rest an order to open fire. Mia and I hung back and off to their left, picking our shots and taking out the few runners who were trying to climb the fence. There were maybe a dozen in all, and it didn’t take long for the guards to take care of them with their rifles.

“Wait, wasn’t there more than that chasing us?” Mia asked once the gunfire had stopped.

We were both panting, more from fear than exertion, and studying each other questioningly. I ejected the empty clip, stuck it in my back pocket, and reloaded my last full clip. The guard I’d seen on the radio moments before slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked over to us.

“What did you say?” he asked Mia.

The three of us were about twenty feet from the inner fence when the second wave attacked. A couple of the guards had been careless enough to be standing too close to the woven wire when the rest of the runners burst through the treeline and hit the fence. These two guards were grabbed, yanked forward, and quickly ripped to pieces. In the chaos following what appeared to have been a distraction created by the runners, the rest of the pack scaled the outer fence, so ferociously that every shot we fired missed.

“Fuck me!” the guard we’d been talking to screamed, then turned tail and ran for the prison.

The remaining guards followed him after securing the inner gate, tossing down their rifles and flat-out running for their lives. I watched deadhead after deadhead scale and climb the inner fence, fall across their fellow zombies who had gotten tangled in the razor wire at the top, then drop to the ground on our side. I holstered my pistol, grabbed and tugged the dumbfounded Mia by the arm, and ran.

Again.

The runners were snapping at our heels by the time we got up to full speed. I blamed it on the fact that Mia and I were notoriously slow runners.

“Don’t look back!” I screamed at my cursing and swearing friend next to me.

My lungs were on fire and my sides were burning.
I better start training for this sort of shit before I end up dropping dead of a heart attack.
The runners were so close I could feel their putrid, hot breath on my neck. We couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn around and attempt to kill them. There were too many and it would take too much time just getting stopped. Yes, a few seconds was all it would take, but a few seconds was all that stood between living and getting our heads ripped off.

Halfway to the prison gate I experienced what I think was my first moment of absolute terror. Or absolute insanity. It’s a fine line. It happened when I realized the gate wasn’t re-opening for us. It had opened for the guards, enough for them to squeeze through, but had closed again and wasn’t re-opening! That split second was almost enough of a distraction to trip me up and make me the next course for the runners. But then I looked up and saw the snipers. Jake was with them, outfitted with another rifle, and they were all taking steady aim at the deadheads behind us.

Screaming the word “Shit!” was the only warning I had time to give before the snipers opened fire. Apparently it had been enough.

Mia ducked when I did, out of reflex rather than necessity, and covered her head with her arms as she ran. The runners were closer than I’d first thought; I could literally hear the sound each bullet made on impact. It was a wet, muffled,
woomff
sound, over and over, so many times I couldn’t even begin to count. Right as I was about to shove off on Mia’s arm to redirect her away from the closed gate, it began to slide open, just enough for us to fall through one at a time and roll head-over-heels across the paved entrance. On the other side was a row of people, men and women, all armed and ready.

A zombie firing-squad.

“Stay down!” I yelled to Mia.

We covered our heads and plastered ourselves to the pavement, that fight-or-flight instinct nearly driving us to jump to our feet and run like scalded rats. The firing squad opened up, killing the few runners that had struggled inside the small opening, and holding off the rest until the gate squeezed shut. I laid there, panting and wheezing, listening to the steady gunshots from above, along the top of the wall. Once they slowed and finally stopped, I struggled to my feet. Still panting harshly, bent over with my hands on my knees, I turned my head to the side and caught Mia’s eye. She wasn’t looking too hot herself. She started to smile, then straightened suddenly, took two steps away, and puked in the grass. One of the women shooters walked over and held Mia’s hair back while I tried not to laugh. It wasn’t funny, nothing about this was funny, but nearly dying has a strange effect on you.

Once Mia was done, a few of the folks who had saved our asses walked over and offered their arms, leading us away. The rest went about the job of clean-up. Michael met us halfway through the courtyard, with Nancy hot on his heels.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Nancy grabbed Mia and hugged her, then ran off to smother Jake when he came down from the wall. I blew out a deep breath, then wiped my forehead and looked back over my shoulder.

“You know, there was a moment back there in town when I thought you were hanging us out to dry.”

He looked surprised I would say such a thing, and was at a loss for words. I waved it off, then stuck my hands on my hips and tilted my face to the sky, blowing out another sigh of relief.

“The horses are safe,” Cal said, walking up behind us. “We’ll round them up after we dispose of the bodies.”

Michael nodded once to me and went off with him to help with the cleanup and general settling-down of the situation. Nancy and Jake came over to where Mia and I stood, faces pale, still wheezing but no longer gasping, and updated us on Zack’s condition.

“He’s in the infirmary now, they’re prepping him for surgery,” Nancy said.

“Shit.” I closed my eyes. Now I was glad I’d killed Shannon. “How bad is he, Nancy, honestly?”

She frowned. “Pretty bad. Both lungs are punctured, and one kidney is lacerated. There’s a lot of internal bleeding, not to mention all the blood he lost from the other wounds across his back. Most of them were basically harmless, but deep enough he’ll need physical therapy for those back muscles, if he lives through the surgery. I’m sorry, Kase.” She dropped her head and started across the courtyard, I assumed to the infirmary, wiping her eyes.

“He’ll make it,” Jake whispered next to me. “We can’t lose another.”

I ran a hand across my face and through my hair, looked at Mia and Jake for a moment, then walked off towards the townsfolk who were busy hauling away bodies.

“Where you goin’?” Jake called out. I stopped and turned back. It was dusk now, so it was difficult to make out the shared look of dread on their faces.

“I need to tell Michael about the swarm. Remember how well they can track?” I tapped my nose and continued on my way.

Jake and Mia both swore under their breath. They knew how well the dead could track using sense of smell alone.

March 23
^rd
: Blueville Correctional Facility

“Hey,” said Jake, entering the room in which I’d spent a sleepless night with Zack, Gus at my side as always, waiting for him to wake up from surgery. After six hours, he was still out.

“Hey.”

I sat with my chair close to the side of the bed, my elbows propped next to Zack’s arm, with my face in my hands. Beeps and purrs of the medical equipment sounded occasionally, interrupted only by the soft snores of Gus.

Jake walked over to my side with his hands in his pockets. “You should get some rest. Maybe somethin’ to eat.”

“Not hungry.”

He reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “I’ll sit with him for a while. Go on, get some sleep.”

I leaned back in the chair and considered Zack a moment before standing to leave. The doctor had said he wouldn’t make it, that he had lost too much blood. It was simply too much trauma for one man to sustain. But he was still breathing, and that had to be better than nothing.

“Jake, what happened before, at that… place. It’s never going to happen again, understand?”

He looked stricken before averting his eyes.

“And if you ever stick a gun in my face again, you’d better be prepared to pull the trigger.”

He hung his head low from shame and guilt, so I patted his shoulder and left the room. The sound of Gus’ toenails tapped along behind me as I headed for the Control Room.

Crossing the courtyard on my way there I noticed several more snipers along the north wall. It was a warm morning, with a slight breeze as usual. On that breeze were the distant sounds of a thousand deadheads converging on our location, no doubt following the blood scent we’d left behind the day before. I set my jaw and pulled the Control Room door open. Shirley sat behind the desk, which was separated from the foyer by a large window (shatterproof I assumed), going through a list of names. Moving her pencil down the page, her wedding rings caught the light. I wondered what had happened to her husband.

“Morning, Shirley,” I said through the round hole in the window.

She looked at me over the rim of her glasses and smiled, pencil paused in mid-scan.

“Morning. What do you need, hun?”

I glanced around the area, realizing the Control Room had once been the offices of the Warden and various other prison officials. Shirley was sitting behind what must have been the dispatcher’s desk. There was a large radio that took up one whole side, controls for what looked like an intercom system, and other controls I assumed were for things such as the large lights around the prison grounds.

“Need to talk to the boss. Is he around?”

“He’s back in his office, come on in,” she said, motioning towards a door off to my right. I heard a buzz when I walked over and grabbed the doorknob, a click when it unlocked, then another buzz and click after it shut behind me. Apparently the security system was still up and running.

“Thanks.”

This side of her area was partitioned off from the hallway with a partial wall which had a swinging half-door at the end. She nodded and went back to her paper and pencil. Before me was a long hallway with a few doors on either side. All the doors were open except the one on the end, the one from which several male voices emanated. I glanced inside the open doorways as I passed; nothing but empty offices, and not recently empty. My guess was the only office that was used on a regular basis was the one on the end, the one I could now see had belonged to the Warden. His name and title was on the door.

I stopped outside and listened a moment before knocking. Whatever was being discussed must have been the subject of great debate. The men inside sounded like they were arguing, but trying to be quiet about it. I knocked twice once there was a lull in the conversation.

“Come in,” a booming voice said from the other side. I took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.

“Gentlemen,” I said.

My hand lingered on the doorknob, my eyes searched for Michael. I thought I would find him behind the Warden’s desk, seeing as how he seemed to be running this place. Much to my surprise, the man sitting in that chair wasn’t Mike, but a barrel-chested, middle-aged man with a shaved head.

Don’t assume anything, maybe that dude just needed to sit down
.

The man leaning against the wall by the window I immediately recognized as Cal, or Calvin. Next to him were Martin and Smith, who I’d met briefly before leaving for Ohio. The man directly in front of me I didn’t know from Adam, but as he stepped to the side, giving me more room to come in, he revealed Michael, who’d been leaning across the desk. The look on his face said he wasn’t happy, so it wasn’t hard for me to imagine he’d had his finger in the big man’s face just seconds before I came in.