Orpheus: Homecoming (The Orpheus Trilogy Book 2) (30 page)

Orpheus and Thompson were losing ground to the undead, and even more of them were closing in on the sides.

"Come on, kid, we need to keep moving, keep pushing,"

Thompson groaned. "I'm not the giant here." He repositioned Orpheus' arm around his shoulder, a human crutch. "Why can't you weigh less?"

"Man up, I could've left you in the truck."

Thompson coughed, and this time Orpheus saw a few specks of blood. It might mean nothing, or it might mean that Thompson was really broken up internally.

It didn't matter.

The number of zombies didn't matter.

The injuries didn't matter.

They had to get to that cabin. It was their only chance at surviving.

The end of the thick woods was upon them. If Orpheus' sense of direction was correct (not a sure thing) they should see the cabin as soon as they broke through. Sure enough, as soon as they left the forest proper, they were greeted by a welcoming silhouette of a cabin, tantalizingly close.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that it was on the other side of a large clearing. They'd lose their advantage over the undead on that straightaway. If the few in front were the fastest of the bunch, Orpheus didn't think that they had built up a big enough lead to get there unscathed. Orpheus was really laboring on his knee. Without Thompson's help, he wouldn't be moving half as fast.

Orpheus unholstered his Beretta and handed it to Thompson. He did the same with the spare magazines. "Try not to lose this one."

"We're not going to make it, are we?" Thompson didn't seem frightened, just accepting.

"Not with you bitching like that, no. But we are going to have to fight. I don't think there's a way around it."

"Shit."

"Just think of the story you'll have, though."

"I sure do love awards. I just don't want them to be posthumous."

They were halfway to the cabin when the first few zombies freed themselves from the brush. As Orpheus had feared, they still had enough pep to break into a close approximation of a sprint. Now there was no question about fighting. The need would be upon them in a few seconds.

"We'll get as far as we can together, then I have to break off. You keep going and get that door opened."

Thompson looked up at his companion. "What about your leg?"

"I can stand. I can probably even fight for a bit. I just can't run. It's our only chance."

"All right."

"And Thompson?"

"Yeah?"

"Try to cover me."

"Aye, aye, Cap'n."

Orpheus looked over his shoulder again. Five seconds left, no more. He raised his tomahawk. It felt ready for its first real test. "Go!"

Thompson did as he was told. The sudden disappearance of his support underneath Orpheus' arm caused his knee pain to flare up all over again. He shifted all of his weight to his right leg just before he crumpled.

The first zombie to reach him was a tall, shirtless man in swimming trunks. He lunged for Orpheus, who sidestepped awkwardly and clotheslined the zombie. He heard a terrible crunch of vertebrae as the thing's head stopped where it was but the body kept going. Orpheus continued to drive his arm through and slammed the zombie to the ground. He followed up with a swift strike to the forehead, the tomahawk easily slicing through necrotic flesh and bone to destroy the brain.

One down.

He hobbled back a few paces before the next one was upon him.

He killed that one, too.

He continued this way. Fighting, retreating. Fighting retreating.

He heard several gunshots behind him, and was about to chastise Thompson for wasting rounds on targets that were so far away, but Thompson had his own set of close range problems. A few zombies flanked him at the door. He got a good headshot on one, and Orpheus watched in horror as the second lunged for the man's neck from behind.

Thompson threw a wild haymaker of an elbow that connected with the zombie's face. It stumbled backwards from the blow, then moved forward again. It had a sizeable dent in its face. Thompson bellowed something unintelligible and fired five panic rounds into the thing's abdomen before wising up and shooting it in the head.

Reload,
Orpheus silently urged.
Reload now.

"Behind you!!!" Thompson yelled.

Orpheus felt the impact in his back and he hit the ground with something on top of him. He landed on his right shoulder, and it was the first time that he had felt the gunshot wound since it had happened. The adrenaline had been pumping hard ever since.

This one was big and still pretty heavy. Orpheus put a forearm into its throat and kept the gnashing teeth at bay while he attempted to free his pinned arm and weapon.

Three rounds, separated by no more than a second each, whistled over the things's head. Orpheus' instincts told him that the rounds were getting closer to hitting their mark each time. The fourth round found its mark and hit the zombie on the shoulder. The round knocked the zombie off balance enough that Orpheus was able to free his tomahawk and behead it with two brutal strikes.

He saw three more bearing down on him and knew that it was over if he stopped to fight them.

He pushed to his feet and limped violently to the cabin.

Thompson was throwing himself at the cabin door. "It's deadbolted! I can't get it open!" His attention shifted to Orpheus. More specifically, it shifted to what was behind Orpheus. "Oh, shit."

"Just shoot!" he screamed.

Thompson emptied the second magazine and scored several hits. The zombies didn't notice or care about the wounds they received, but they were still just flesh and bone and were knocked off course just enough.

Got to time this correctly
, Orpheus thought. "On three!"

"What on three?!?"

"The door! One!"

Step.

"Two!"

Step.

"Three!!!"

Thompson understood just in time. He threw his shoulder into the door at the same instant as Orpheus. Their combined mass and momentum caused the deadbolt to break free of the frame. Thompson was closer to the opening and his momentum carried him all the way through.

The first zombie made it to within five feet of the threshold. There was no time to kill it, so Orpheus stuck out his hand, grabbed it by its shirt, and used its own momentum to rifle it into cabin. "Incoming!"

"Goddamn you, Holt!" Thompson screamed from the other side of the door.

Orpheus slipped inside and closed the door as quickly as he could, but two arms slipped through. He put his shoulder into the heavy door and pushed as hard as he could, but he couldn't close it. He only had a few more seconds before too many of those things just overpowered him. He considered using the tomahawk, but he had no angle to make any effective cuts. It would just waste time.

"Little help!" Thompson yelled. He had his hands wrapped around the zombie's throat, at a stalemate. Orpheus slid the tomahawk across the floor to Thompson and hoped he would grab it in time.

He turned back to his own problem and threw himself into the door again. He heard the snapping of bone, but the arms held together. His anger, kept mostly in check since he had come back to the island, erupted all at once. He slammed into the door three, four, five times. Infuriated that the arms wouldn't just break off and fall, he grabbed one and wrenched it backward viciously. This time it broke off cleanly. He dropped it to the floor and repeated the action with the second arm. He was able to shut the door, but the lockset was ruined.

"Here! Here!" Thompson was gamely attempting to slide a heavy oak country armoire into place in front of the door. It caught on a raised section of hardwood floor and he just said, "Fuck it!" and tipped it over. It fell toward Orpheus, who was able to both avoid being crushed and redirect it at the door. The armoire hit the door with a crash and stayed there, leaning.

"Anything out there?" Orpheus asked.

Thompson was nearly out on his feet, but he managed to make it to the window and pull back the drapes. "Got a few seconds."

Orpheus moved away from the door and retrieved his tomahawk from the zombie's skull before dropping to a knee at the base of the armoire. He hacked away at one of the hardwood flooring planks and created a deep trench. Before he could slide the base of the armoire into it, more zombies hit the door. They unintentionally made Orpheus' job easier, as the impact drove the armoire backward a few inches until the base jammed itself into the trench. However many were outside pounded on the door, but the cabin door was sturdy. With the armoire adding strength, it would be impenetrable for the near future.

Orpheus slid on his ass until his back reached a wall. He sat there breathing heavily, and assessed his injuries.

His verdict was that he was a genuine hot mess.

"Nice job," he said to Thompson when he began to breathe normally again.

Thompson didn't hear him. He was under the window, unmoving.

"Aw, no, no, no," Orpheus said, as he dragged himself across the floor to the reporter. "Come on, kid, don't do this shit." After what seemed like hours, Thompson's chest began to rise and fall at regular intervals. He wasn't dead ... not yet ... but he was out cold from fatigue.

"There you go," Orpheus said as he sat next to Thompson. Orpheus watched his own breath form clouds in front of him, and for the first time he was able to slow down and realize how cold the cabin was. There hadn't been time to realize the extent of the damage that they'd both taken, and there was almost no doubt that they were both hypothermic long before they'd reached the cabin. Now, seriously wounded and approaching shock, Orpheus began to shut down. One of the armoire doors had fallen open and spilled most of its contents. With great effort, he reached over and managed to snag a few blankets with his fingertips. His shoulder protested loudly as he drew the blankets back. He moved closer to Thompson until they were touching at the shoulder, covered them both up as best he could, and joined his friend in unconsciousness.

Orpheus awoke to the sound of pounding. His fatigued mind first thought that it was the rain hitting the aluminum roof, but the sound was all wrong for that.

Was it drumming? That made no sense. Not out here.

The cabin had fallen into darkness. He took a look at his watch, but it was too dark to make out the time. He tried to press the button that would light up the display, normally the easiest of tasks, but he couldn't make his fingers work.

His eyelids started to flutter closed, but a single word, barely a whisper, shocked him awake.

"Boss."

He saw two silhouettes approaching him from the back of the house. One was average height and stocky, the other tall and lanky.

Orpheus instinctively pushed backwards in an attempt to put more distance between them, but he was already sealed up tight against the wall. He croaked out, "Thompson." The man next to him didn't respond. He tried again and got the same result.

"Relax, Orpheus."

The words carried no hint of a threat, and Orpheus settled a bit. It's not like he had a choice. He was wiped out and weaponless. Whatever was going to happen would happen without any input from him.

The two figures stopped a few feet short and squatted down in front of him. Orpheus tried to get a better look, but they remained dark, featureless.

"Well, would you look at this? The boss is taking a little nappy nap." The figure spoke enough that Orpheus was finally able to identify the voice, but his conclusion was impossible. That man was dead.

"M-Mutt?"

"Give the man a see-gar." This time the other figure spoke. Also not possible.

The tall figure patted his front shirt pockets. "I'm fresh out, Sammy."

"You guys can't be here," Orpheus protested.

"So who are you talking to?"

Orpheus didn't feel like arguing with his hallucination. He wanted it to be real. He wanted to be able to say the one thing that he never had a chance to. "I'm sorry I let you guys down."

"Can that shit," the Sam-shadow said. "We did what we did because we wanted to. Death is just the price of doing business sometimes."

"We went out together," the Mutt-shadow said. "Like champs, I might add. You've seen better days, pal."

"Ragged is the only way to be in this shithole, I guess." Orpheus had dropped any resistance to the presence of his two dead friends. "No matter how well you plan."

"That seems to be the case, yeah," Sam said.

Mutt leaned in closer. "Listen, fun's fun, but you gotta get up, hoss."

Orpheus sighed. "I'm burnt up, Mutt. I feel done. I don't see a way back." He motioned to his Beretta on the floor. "I only see the way out."

"Yeah, nothing more to do I guess, right? All's well that ends well?"

"I just don't have anything left, Sam."

"Huh." Mutt paused. "What about this kid here? Does he have anything left? Just going to take it out of his hands? That's not the man I know. That guy had the biggest nuts I've ever seen and didn't give a shit for the odds."

"Look, I-"

"If that's not enough motivation, there's about 30,000 dead people you can talk to," Sam said. "That particular business isn't finished, not by a damn sight."

Mutt continued. "Or there's always this." The pounding sound was replaced by a woman's screams. These he had no problem placing. They were Jackie's, and he'd heard them live over a video call.

"She's safe, Mutt."

"She's not, and you fucking well know it. That twerp is still out there. He might not be the only one, either. You think anyone's safe, least of all your family? I'll have some of what you're smoking."

"Come on, Orpheus, we know that you already know this. So let's skip the part where you pretend to feel sorry for yourself and we pretend to have to convince you. Time to cowboy up."

"You know that help's coming. It's just a matter of when. Your job is to make it until then. Help them find you. This isn't rocket science. Keep fighting.
The job isn't over.
" Orpheus couldn't see Mutt's eyes (didn't even know if he had any), but he could feel a challenging gaze nonetheless.

Their words hit home. The job wasn't done. Not even close. Orpheus leaned towards the shadows and rolled his head side to side, loosening up his neck. "You guys suck."

"It's alive, Sammy!"

"About time. I was getting angry."

Orpheus laughed. "You know, even with all the time we spent together, I never saw that. Not once."

"You didn't want to." Sam's tone was so flat and emotionless that Orpheus couldn't tell if he was serious or if it was just his deadpan humor at work. He thought that it might be a little of both.

"Well," Mutt said, "our work here is done." The shadows turned to leave.

"Wait," Orpheus said. "Are you real?"

Sam said, "Does it matter?"

"I guess not. Thank you. For everything."

The shadows seemed to nod at him.

"Oh, one other thing," Mutt said, drawing out the last syllable so it sounded like
thaaaaang.

"Hmm?"

The Mutt-shadow drew back an open hand and hammered Orpheus across his cheek. "Wake the fuck up!"

O

Ethan gave Jameson the final turn direction that would lead to the cabin. "It's about a half mile up."

"I'll scoot ahead and see what I can see." The helicopter left the ponderous Rhino in the dust and arrived at the site quickly. He put it in hover and engaged the spotlight. "Figures."

"There's like twelve cabins down there," German said.

"Ethan, a couple of problems. I can't exactly see house numbers down there, and half of them are hidden by trees."

"We'll be there in a sec. What's the situation?"

"That's the third problem. Those things are everywhere."

German said, "It looks like they might be clustering more around one or two, but I can't be certain."

"Damn. Standby."

Jameson said, "I hate standing by."

"You and me both."

"How you feeling?"

German shivered in his seat, still damp from his time in the river. "Almost dry. I'll live."

"That was a ballsy thing you did."

"Eh, I like swimming."

Jameson grumbled, "Island full of wiseasses. Take the compliment." He spun the helicopter in place so he could get a better look at the cabins. He had almost made a full revolution when German said, "Whoa, stop. Go back."

Jameson complied, and then he saw it. "Is that smoke?"

"I think so. Coming from a chimney."

"I don't believe it," Jameson said. "Kid, your longshot paid off. One of the cabins is using the fireplace. I'm spotlighting it."

"We see it. Our angle sucks, how many are there?"

Jameson didn't bother to physically count them. "I'm not sure we brought enough bullets."

O

When Orpheus awoke from his fever dream, he immediately felt the sting from Mutt's slap, and wondered how that was possible.

Exactly one-half of a second later, he realized that the pain came from ragged fingernails being raked across his face. He pushed Thompson to the floor and rolled to the opposite side, away from the flailing zombie arm.

His hand flew to his face and came away wet. Research had proven conclusively that the zombie virus was only transmitted through bites, but it was still a terrifying experience to be slashed by one.

"I'm up, I'm up!" Thompson said, although he was still prone.

"Move!" Orpheus said. He was already pushing a China cabinet across the floor and in front of the window. He was able to push the zombie back enough to block the window, but the zombie (or zombies, by now) wasn't giving up. The cabinet began to rock forward. Orpheus put his own weight up against it, but he could only keep it stable for so long.

He was about to tell Thompson to help him, but the reporter was already pushing the love seat to him. Orpheus had to leave his position at the cabinet to help Thompson lift the loveseat onto its end. The zombies almost knocked the cabinet over, but the two men were able to wedge the additional furniture against it. Even if the zombies were able to move both of them, they'd only have a couple inches of clearance before it all got stuck against the doorway.

Thompson was bent over, hands on his knees, panting. "And now ... we have ... nowhere to sit."

Orpheus, in a similar posture, was surprised to hear himself laugh. "I'm about to fall back asleep just leaning against it. How you holding up?"

"Everything hurts. And I'm not even the one who got shot."

"Just grazed me, fortunately. Would've been a lot worse if you hadn't lost your mind." Orpheus moved around the living room. The last time he was here there had been a drawer full of candles. Luck was with him for once, and he lit several. The candlelight was a welcome sight. They didn't have to worry about drawing the zombies to them, so he felt free to light it up like a Christmas tree.

Thompson turned his head. "I barely remember it. I just went blank. I was so fucking angry. I mean, I brought the asshole to the island. Yeah, it was Ralston's idea, but I approved him. I
liked
him."

"Don't beat yourself up. He was going to get himself here one way or the other. He's not going to bother us anymore."

Thompson noticed the change in tone. "You sound upset about it."

Orpheus lit another candle. "I murdered him. It had to be done, but I won't forget his screams for a while." Something that Thompson had said clicked in Orpheus' mind. "Hedley wasn't your pick?"

"No, I couldn't reach my regular guy. Ralston made a recommendation."

"The good Colonel has his prints all over everything. He and I are going to talk real soon."

Thompson cocked his ear toward the roof. "You hear that?"

Orpheus listened. It was the same noise as in his dream. His mind must have incorporated it. "A helicopter."

"Ours?"

"Has to be. We only have one, and Jameson sleeps with the keys. I mean that literally."

"How'd they find us?"

"No clue." Orpheus listened as the sound of the rotors faded a little. "They haven't yet. We have to help them."

"How?"

"Grab anything that'll burn. The more smoke it throws off, the better."

Orpheus went to work on the fireplace. A stack of newspaper sat next to it. He crumbled up a bunch and jammed it under the wood holder. He heard Thompson ransacking the kitchen. "I need kindling, too!"

Thompson returned with a few packs of toothpicks and wood skewers for barbecuing. "Best I can do for that."

"That'll work." Orpheus added all of it to the fireplace and lit the paper.

The toothpicks caught almost immediately, and the skewers weren't far behind. He added the small logs that were left in the pile and soon had a solid fire.

Small did them no good. He needed huge.

Something that couldn't be ignored.

A bunch of wicker figurines were on top of the mantle. He swept them off and added them to the fire. He hated to do it, as someone had put a lot of work into them, but this was life or death.

He heard a crash in the kitchen and then the sound of splintering wood. Thompson returned with an armful. "Lamp oil, and here's a friggin' chair."

Orpheus added the chair. When he poured the lamp oil on, the flames shot up high enough to disappear from his view into the chimney. "Holy shit." He threw on the rest of the newspaper, as well. He hoped that some of the embers would carry out into the night air. They'd be impossible to miss.

Every few minutes, he added something. A piece of broken furniture here, a throw pillow there.

Twice he believed he heard the helicopter heading toward the house, but both times it retreated.

He was beginning to lose hope. He had no idea what was coming out of the chimney, and it was full on nighttime now.

The rotors grew louder once more, and this time it sounded like they settled over the house and stayed there.

Unconvinced, Orpheus looked over at Thompson. The look on his face confirmed it.

"Holy shit, it worked."

"Yeah, but I have no idea how we get out, and we're probably buried in zombies now."

The sound of the rotors retreated again, and Orpheus said, "You've got to be kidding me."

He heard someone shouting to him, but he couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. He checked his two-way, but it was still wrecked from whatever Hedley had done to it. "You have a phone on you?"

"Don't you think I would've used it? I lost it in the crash."

Orpheus heard the voice again, and this time a word came through:
fireplace.

He looked up at the ceiling. Someone was on the roof.