Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (30 page)

This is insane, this is insane, this is insane!

I was sure the other two were thinking it as well, except Jake was probably adding some color to his. The huge horde swelled in size as we got closer, though I was relieved beyond words to see the mass wasn’t very deep. If it had been, we’d have been riding to our deaths. Hell, we might have been anyways, but at least our chances were looking better.

“This was a fuckin’
horrible
idea
!” Jake repeated his earlier gripe.

“You’re getting soft, Jakie!” Mia cackled.

My lips twitched and curved upward when details of the deadhead swarm became clearer. They were a rotting mess, barely on their feet. Most were naked, but there wasn’t anything to show. Flesh had long since fallen away, along with certain anatomical parts, the muscle underneath was decayed so badly it was amazing they could still put one foot in front of the other. Tendons and ligaments shone white against the afternoon sun, eyeballs hung loose from their sockets, jawbones and teeth were blackened from something I’m sure I didn’t want to think about. Basically they were walking skeletons with just enough soft stuff still clinging to their bones to make my stomach flip over.

Another good sign: no fast bastards running with this swarm.

And the ones trailing us were quickly falling behind.

“Spread out, ride straight through! Don’t slow down no matter what! Ride, ride, ride!” I ordered just before we hit the front line of deadheads.

Mia and Jake did exactly as ordered, fanning out at the last moment and slicing through the front of the swarm like a knife through butter. I noticed they pulled their feet and legs up and were nearly sitting on their boots while the horses fought their way through, so I did the same, grunting in pain and lecturing myself all the while for not thinking of that ahead of time. The horses plowed their way through and over the walking corpses, something that would have never worked back when these bodies were fresh and strong. Now they were like stinky, disgusting dominoes, and as long as we kept our legs pulled up and away from a lucky mouth that just happened to graze our skin, we’d be alright.

Behind us we could hear thump after thump as the runners crashed head-first into their slower brethren. Bones cracked, guts spilled,
thwump-thwump-crack-crunch
. I didn’t dare look behind me, it was taking all my focus and strength just to keep my ass in the saddle. I glanced every few seconds over towards Mia and Jake, to make sure they were still on their horses and heading in the right direction. I was worried that somewhere in this shitstorm of death, we’d lose our sense of direction and, for lack of a better term, get lost.

True, the mass wasn’t very deep. However it’s very easy to get yourself lost when all you can see are assholes and elbows flying all around.

“There!” I pointed straight ahead, then instantly regretted letting go of the saddle horn when I swayed wickedly to the right.

My hair, which should have been pulled back but wasn’t, got caught on the collarbone of a very tall zombie. I screamed again, a little from fear, mostly from pain, as my grip on the saddle horn and Daisy’s forward plunging ripped a chunk of my hair out. I turned my eyes to the right, to make sure I hadn’t picked up part of a hitchhiker (my stomach was very relieved to see that I wasn’t carrying half of a collarbone in my hair), then fixed my eyes on the prize: a farm, straight ahead of us, equipped with a barn large enough to ride the horses inside. The runners would be slowed up enough for someone to dismount and open the large front door.

“I’m on it!” Jake shouted.

He was the first to peel out of the swarm, his horse limping but still running hard. Mia came out next, her horse no worse for the wear, with me and Daisy bringing up the rear. I ran my eyes over Jake and Mia as best as I could, considering they were ahead of me and running at a high gallop, and couldn’t see any visible signs of injury. I checked myself over, and with the exception of missing a bit of hair, I was fine as well. The horses didn’t even look that bad, if you could get past the blood and other random gunk that was now matted into their hair.

“Never again. Jesus Christ, never again.” My words were swept away by the warm midday air whipping past my face.

The farm was closing in, so I turned my head and finally chanced a look behind us. Some of the runners were still on their feet, but they were having more trouble struggling through the swarm than we’d had. I couldn’t tell what had happened to the others, whether they had been trampled to pieces, or had broken their legs trying to fight their way through. And to be honest, I really didn’t give a shit. Their numbers were thinned, they were a couple of football fields away from us, and that’s all that mattered.

“Come on!” Jake screamed.

I looked back and saw Jake had already made it to the barn and opened the door for us. His horse was standing off to the side, heaving and panting so hard I was sure the old girl was going to die before we could get her inside. Mia didn’t even slow when she neared the doorway, she simply ducked and let her horse sail in. I figured what the hell, and let Daisy dive inside as well. Mia was already off her horse and running back towards the door to help Jake, who was pulling on his mare, cussing the whole time, trying to drag her inside. After they finally made it in, Mia yanked the door shut.

“Secure the door!” I pulled Daisy to a stop and practically fell off. I was still pumped up and feeling like my skull was about to split wide open. At least the adrenaline rush was numbing the pain in my side and my face for the time being.

The barn door was already equipped with a large sliding plank that, once pulled down, fit inside another sturdy piece fixed to the barn wall itself. After Jake got his horse moved around towards the back with ours, he helped us move a stack of hay bales in front of the door. It wasn’t much, but with the large plank already in place, we figured it would be enough to buy us some time. We were panting as hard as our horses. I glanced around the barn, getting a quick layout of the place before the runners converged on our location. There were no other doors or windows that I could see, and the only way out was through the loft window above us.

That was good, we didn’t need another way out.

“Grab your gear,” I said, this time in a considerably lower tone of voice than before. We had to get our nerves under control if we stood any kind of chance of getting out of that barn alive.

“Alright. I’ll stow the horses away, you two get up top,” Jake said.

The three of us pulled our rifles from our saddles and scrambled to carry what ammunition we had left over to the hayloft ladder. Jake set his gear at the foot of the ladder while Mia and I climbed it, rifles slung over our shoulders and arms loaded with two boxes of ammo each. It would be enough, as long as we made each shot count. Mia had the least amount; she’d been clearing our front most of the afternoon. Between Jake and myself, there would be enough. There had to be.

“Here they come!” Jake warned.

Mia had just cleared the ladder and was setting up on the right side of the window when the first of the runners slammed into the barn door. I jerked myself up the last few rungs, crawled on my knees to the loft window, and set up on the opposite side from Mia. Jake, being Jake, joined the party making as much noise as possible.

“Ouch, goddamnit,” he mumbled, catching his shirt sleeve on a nail while climbing the ladder. “C’mon, you bitch.” His rifle barrel jammed against the corner of the ladder opening. “Stupid motherfucker.” He dropped a box of ammo. “Shit!” He tripped again, and made some more inaudible grunting sounds as he crawled over to the window.

“Nice of you to join us,” Mia said.

“Bite me, goddamnit, I’m tired,” Jake mumbled again and loaded his weapon.

I was enjoying the interaction between my friends, something I hadn’t been able to enjoy for a long time. I slid the bolt of my rifle into place and caught both their nervous stares.

“Why so serious?” I asked.

Sure enough, Jake leveled his rifle and made his first shot while doing his best Joker impression. I shook my head and began firing, using my knee as a gun rest. We coordinated our gunfire almost immediately. The runners below us continued to throw themselves against the barn door. We took down the ones farthest out first, the few stragglers who had finally jerked themselves from the writhing dead swarm that was almost completely out of sight. We worked our way inward, taking our time, picking our shots. We missed, several times, but more often than not we hit our targets. We dropped thirty runners in total, not counting the mosh pit underneath us. Mia was out of rifle ammo, Jake was down to his last reload, and I had ten shells left.

“Sidearms,” I said and pulled my pistol. We emptied our clips into the ten runners below, just as I heard the large plank inside the door buckle from the stress.

“Holy shit…that was close,” Jake whispered beside me.

I was shaking so badly, I almost lost my handgun out the window. Of the three of us, Mia was the most composed. Or rather she was, until her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell backwards, passed out cold. Jake chuckled. It was the sort you hear when someone isn’t quite sure whether they want to cry, puke, scream, or laugh. I didn’t dare let myself relax yet. I stared out as hard and as far as I could, making sure we really had killed all the runners. After several minutes of nothing but harsh breathing coming from both me and Jake, and the weak moaning from the swarm growing fainter and fainter as they moved away, I turned, slid down onto my butt, and looked at him. He had already sat down and was staring at me. Mia was still passed out.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah. They too far gone to come after us?” he referred to the slow deadheads and their advanced state of decomposition.

“I think so, yeah.”

Jake looked over his shoulder at Mia, who had surprisingly started to snore. He jerked his thumb towards the loft ladder and looked back to me. “Wanna pull that thing up and get some sleep?”

“Yeah.”

We crawled over towards the ladder and, very slowly, pulled it up into the loft. Our energy was sapped, our bodies shutting down, the adrenaline rush long since gone. The pain was back, and I’d never been so tired in my life. We crawled back to the window, Jake grabbed my arm and pulled me down between him and Mia, and I was snoring before my head hit the hay.

* * *

We didn’t wake up until the next morning, some fifteen hours later. Jake’s horse was dead, with Mia’s not far behind. Daisy seemed to be doing alright, but I didn’t hold out much hope for her either. We had ridden them too hard the day before. My horses weren’t bred for long distance endurance races. Afterward we went over to the old farmhouse to look for food. We hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, and it was starting to catch up with us. I didn’t even bother with the radio on my side; we were too far away for the others to hear us. Unless the good folks who had lived here pre-Z had a vehicle stashed away in the garage, we were up Shit Creek.

“Man, I’m so hungry, I’d eat a rat if I had any shells to shoot it with,” Jake said, rummaging around the pantry.

“Yeah, no kidding. I’ll kill the sonofabitch with my bare hands, I don’t care right now.” Mia’s head was shoved into one of the cabinets above the counter. The kitchen had been cleaned out, that much was clear.

I kicked an empty tin can across the hardwood floor. “This is useless, guys. There’s nothing here.”

Mia turned the sink faucet on and stuck her mouth under it as a small trickle of water seeped out. Jake hurried over and took his turn, taking a few drinks before motioning me over. I was able to get a mouthful before the faucet went dry, the water tasting stale and smelling of sulfur.

“Shit.” I rubbed my side and wiped my dry lips on my shirt sleeve. “Let’s check out the rest of the house, then head back to the barn. We’ve got some jerky in our saddlebags, unless someone stole it.”

The other two nodded wearily and followed me through the house. We went from room to room, searching for anything that could be of use. The rest of the place was like the kitchen—cleaned out.

“We could always eat my horse,” Jake mumbled.

Mia smacked him on the arm. “Jesus, Jake.”

“Let’s go.” I was so close to tears it was embarrassing.

Just as we started out the backdoor, Mia spied something shiny hanging on a nail between the doorjamb and an Elvis Presley collector’s clock. It was a set of car keys.

“Hey,” she said, reaching out and snagging them from the nail.

The three of us stared at those keys like they were McDonald’s french fries. I looked at Jake, he looked at Mia, and Mia looked out the door towards the garage.

“Let’s get the hell outta here, ladies.”

* * *

Since I had already told Jake once that I was not leaving my horse, the trip back to West Virginia took a great deal longer than the trip out. Daisy was tied to the back bumper of the ‘84 Crown Victoria we had found in the garage back at the farmhouse. It was slow going (we didn’t want to run her relentlessly like I had coming across the Ohio countryside), but we were making our way back home with surprisingly little trouble. We had indeed found beef jerky in our saddle bags, though it only made a dent in our hunger, and Mia’s horse was dead by the time we’d finished searching the house. The old car had a full tank of gas when we headed out, and I had no idea how far it would get us. Either way it was better than hoofing it all the way back.