Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (25 page)

“Shit,” Nancy breathed.

Once again the garage was quiet. The only sound was the labored breathing of the runner.

What happened to everyone? Where did they all go?

She let her eyes shift from the runner’s face to the area behind it. Nothing moved. She turned her head slightly to the left; maybe the person who had shouted at her earlier was still there.

Nothing.

She looked to her right.

Again, nothing.

She knew the kids were in the SUV. They had either screamed themselves into passing out, or they had shut their mouths out of instinct. She didn’t have a radio, Kelly had it.

Where the hell is Kelly?
Then she realized,
That’s who yelled at me to shoot.

The runner tilted its head again, this time smelling the air, then it screeched and jumped from the bed of the pickup. Nancy whipped her head around to watch it as it ran past her door, so close she could see the writing on the flipped-out shirt-tag of the flannel it was wearing. She saw its target before the target knew what was coming.

Kelly and several others.

They were hiding behind a large piece of equipment, a fork-truck to be exact. Nancy screamed and beat on her window, hoping to warn them, but it was a moot point. The runner was already on top of them. When one would try to run, it would strike out with an arm and knock them back down. It attacked and fed with such ferocity and raw anger that Kelly and the others were helpless to stop it. A few tried to limp away, crying and screaming the whole time, but were quickly dragged back down. Blood splashed, pieces of soft tissue were tossed about.

In the background Nancy heard more screams, but they weren’t screams of the dying. She checked to see if the doors were locked, then eased herself down onto the long bench seat. Gus was in the floor and staring at her with wide eyes. He was so afraid he wasn’t even panting. She held one hand out and let it rest on his muzzle, hoping he would stay quiet. That was their only hope now.

Stay quiet, stay down, and hope the runner and his children wouldn’t notice them.

* * *

“Michael, this is Jonah. Come back,” the worn gunslinger said into his radio.

He was still on the wall, and had been firing into an endless mass of deadheads so long he’d given up trying to keep track of the time. He knew it was still about an hour before dawn from the feel of the air. The other three snipers on the wall were firing in sequence, to assure each had time to reload while the other was still firing. Jonah had decided to take five, grab something to drink, and stand to stretch his legs. There were snipers on all the other roofs, all firing, but the noise had been scattered just enough for him to hear screaming coming from the southern building. Or what he thought had been screaming. His ears, along with his gun hand, were finely tuned and hardly ever let him down. If he hadn’t been sure, he wouldn’t have tried raising Michael on the radio.

“North wall calling Michael, respond,” he said again. His radio crackled, then Michael’s distinct voice answered back.

“What is it, Jonah?”

“There’s something going on in the south building.”

“What?”

“I said…there is something going on in the south building. Copy?” Jonah clenched his jaw; he was short on patience and even shorter on temper.

“I copy. What do you mean?” Michael asked.

“I heard screams.”

Silence.

“Copy that?” Jonah asked.

“Yeah, I heard you. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, I’ll radio John,” Michael said.

Jonah walked over towards the edge of the wall and looked over at the southern building. There seemed to be some sort of commotion going on up top, three people hovering over another on the roof. He watched the three standing help the fourth to his feet, then watched the largest man grab at his side.

“John, this is Michael,” Jonah heard over the radio in his hand. He watched the large man walk away from the other three, raise the radio to his mouth, and answer.

“Go ahead, Mike.”

John didn’t sound right. There was something in his voice, an edge the cowboy had heard before.

“Hey, John, is there anything going on over there? Screaming, or anything else out of the ordinary, besides the shitload of zombies outside?”

“Yeah─” John paused to run a hand over his stubbly chin. “Kasey’s here, ran up from the infirmary. Said Keegan was down there in her room. He attacked her, beat her up pretty good. He’s infected. She got away before he could infect her, but she says he turned right after she got away, says she closed him in the room.”

There was that edge again. There was something John wasn’t telling Michael. Either purposely or accidentally, it didn’t matter.

“Keegan?” Michael yelled. “Keegan’s infected? And he’s inside?”

“Yeah. Like I said, Kasey shut the door, trapped him in the room. We’re going down now to check it out.” Jonah watched John turn away from the ledge and walk back to the other three, who he now realized were Kasey and most likely Mia and Jake judging by the way they hovered over her.

“John, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jonah came back over the radio. He didn’t want to get involved, butt his nose in where it didn’t belong, but he knew what he had heard, and he had heard screaming coming from the first level of that building. It hadn’t been made by a living person.

He was also watching someone who had just come tearing out of the front entrance. They weren’t alive either.

“C’mon, Jonah, what the hell are you talking about? I have to go put that bastard Keegan down, you’re wasting my time!” John yelled.

“Take a look over the ledge.”

Jonah was already backing up, reaching out his free hand and picking up his rifle. He didn’t want to make any sudden movements, didn’t want to alert the other snipers on the wall. Last thing they needed was mass panic. It was bad enough the other two snipers on the adjacent rooftops who had radios were already walking to their own ledges, catching the conversation and becoming too curious for their own good.

“Oh shit…” John said.

Jonah could see him standing at the ledge, looking down on yet another screeching banshee who had thrown itself out the doorway. Jonah looked to his right and saw the rubbernecker on that ledge was in fact Michael.

“Oh my God—they’re inside! Snipers, turn towards the courtyard and open fire!” he shouted, then Jonah watched him gesture frantically to the snipers with him.

John was doing the same on the south building, and Abby was repeating the gesture on the east building. Rifles turned inwards and opened fire as one runner after another burst from the south building entrance. Jonah held his fire, his mind working through the bells and whistles towards the root problem.

“John,” he said, his mouth pressed close to his radio.

He watched the large man shoot once, then turn to argue with one of the Road Crew, Jonah’s nickname for Kasey and her gang.

“John,” Jonah repeated.

His eyes darted to the other two rooftops where the shooters were all focused on the three-ring circus below. The deadheads outside had been forgotten, and everyone was now shooting with a speed they weren’t accustomed to. These runners were a different story, a breed apart, and if you weren’t quick, you were dead.

“John!” Jonah finally shouted.

John stopped arguing with the other person and grabbed the radio off his belt. “What?!”

The situation was threatening to spiral out of control, and Jonah was damned if he was going to get sucked down with it.

“You said Keegan was infected. Did Kasey see any others?”

Silence.

The person John had been arguing with was shaking her head.
Kasey,
he thought.

“No, she didn’t see any others. Like I said, Keegan didn’t turn until after she left.
After
, Jonah.”

“Well then, I’d say Keegan got out, and found himself something to eat.”

Jonah clipped the radio to his belt and laid down fire on the entrance of the east building, where three runners were grabbing at the door and throwing it open.

“Abby, stay sharp! Three just got in and they’re coming to you!” Michael shouted over the radio.

“Same to you. Four headed your way!” Abby answered back.

Damn things could open doors. They were too fast. Jonah knew they couldn’t stop them all from getting inside the buildings. He turned to one of his snipers and ordered the man to keep his rifle aimed on the stairwell.

“If anything pops up, you blow its head off, boy.” His gruff voice was tinted with fear.

The other man did as he was told and moved his shooter’s bench around so he was facing the stairwell. He glanced around at the other rooftops before he resumed shooting; each of the groups was positioning someone at their rooftop doors.

“Damn,” he whispered.

Kelly had just burst out of the south door. She was missing an arm, half her torso, but her pretty face was still intact. She was screaming as she ran, seemingly random at first, then Jonah noticed her veer off suddenly and head straight towards the west building. Michael’s building.

“Well, ain’t that disturbing,” he muttered, then put a bullet into the side of her head, just above her ear.

She fell flat on her face, hopefully before Michael had recognized her. Jonah glanced over at the man, who was still firing over and over at the south door, and decided he hadn’t. Then he watched Kasey and her two friends duck into the south rooftop door and disappear. He shook his head and kept firing, doing what he could to keep the runners off his wall.

March 25
^th
: Just After Dawn

“Behind you!” I screamed at Jake.

We had walked ourselves right into a wasps’ nest. Except the things buzzing around us, throwing themselves with a unified fury, weren’t bees. And they did a little more than just sting.

“Shit!” Jake hit the floor on a dead run.

He rolled headfirst into the wall, then slammed his feet into the chest of the runner who had nearly taken his head off. He jerked his handgun around and shot, snapping the zombie’s head back and knocking it off its feet. Mia and I were occupied with our own pair of deadheads, kicking and dodging until we put ourselves into a position to fire.

“Holy crap, what a rush,” Jake said in a high-pitched voice.

We had been ambushed in the main corridor of the second floor, on our way to the garage. We’d heard enough of the radio conversation between Jonah and John to put two-and-two together. Harvel’s bitch, whose name we now knew to be Keegan, had evidently escaped the infirmary room I’d shut him in, made his way to the closest source of food, the garage, and started his feeding frenzy. The only thing catching me up was why had those people turned so quickly? Keegan had obviously taken quite some time to change, and from what Jake had told me, Mike what’s-his-name had too, during their trip to West Virginia last October.

Jake had been explaining his theory on this when we were ambushed, just around the corner from the stairwell leading to the bottom floor.

“You alright?” I asked Mia.

We looked each other up and down, I suppose checking for bite marks or wounds. She nodded and turned to Jake.

“You?” she asked him. He got to his feet, dusted himself off, and did a quick check of his arms and legs.

“Yeah, seem to be in one piece.” Then he grabbed his crotch. “Yep, all here.”

“Jesus, Jake,” I said, rubbing my back close to my kidney. Mia smacked me on the arm and started off towards the stairwell.

“Let’s go,” she said. Jake reloaded his pistol and turned to follow her. I brought up the rear.

Mia stopped at the door for only a short moment before throwing it open. Jake had his handgun raised to cover the opening, but nothing came charging out at us. I blew out a breath and followed the two down the last flight of stairs.

“So, Jake, you were saying before?” I asked.

Our steps echoed in the dark hallway, our voices slicing it like a knife. We figured, why be quiet? Better to let the zombies know where we were, than to be sneaking around and be surprised by one when it jumped out of the darkness. Least this way we would hear them coming.

“Oh, yeah. Like I was sayin’, I think the time it takes to turn is directly correlated to the victim’s life expectancy. For example,” he said and cleared his throat like a college professor. “If a dude gets scratched, or even bit, those aren’t mortal wounds, see? So however long it takes that person to die, is how long it’s gonna take that person to change. Now, if the dude is ripped to shit, and gonna die in like a matter of minutes? Well then, he’ll change in a matter of minutes. It’s common sense, really. I don’t think it has anythin’ to do with who’s doin’ the infectin’, slow deadhead or fast deadhead.”

We’d stopped at the bottom of the steps and were waiting for Jake to finish his lecture before yanking the door open.