The Regulators - 02 (12 page)

I always wear fingerless gloves when I go on missions. It
just feels more natural when I have some bare skin on the trigger. In my mind
at least, it also gives me a better grip on my weapons.

I felt the wetness of the blood on the bare skin of my
fingers immediately. I frantically began to search the area between my shoulder
and my ear for an injury. It wasn’t an easy thing to do while I was running,
but I found the small wound on my neck. I felt the sting of it when my finger
came into contact with the torn skin.

I had been bitten.

It must have happened after I lost my tactical vest complete
with bite collar. I was probably so pumped up on adrenaline I never even
realized I was being bitten.

I was already feeling the effects.

It wasn’t horrible yet, but I was feeling them, and they
seemed to be worsening. I was rather alarmed by all of this and did my best to
stay calm and in control while I came up with a plan. As things stood, I had
lost contact with my team; I was bitten and starting to get sick; and I had a
few hundred zombies about fifty feet behind me.

“
A few hundred
?”

Yeah. The group was growing due to all the noise they were
making, not to mention the screams.

All in all, I had cause to be alarmed. I needed to take care
of my bite wound immediately, but healing required a natural element. Water and
a hot bath in one of the many empty houses would take care of that. I just
needed to lose all of my rotting friends despite my waning strength in order to
get there. Outrunning them and regrouping with my team was no longer an option.
I wasn’t sure I could move fast enough for that anymore, let alone have the
strength to get back to the guys if I did somehow manage to lose the zombies.

I had no idea how long it would take before I weakened to
the point that I could no longer run, and I didn’t want to find out. The only
option left to me was to find a hiding place and heal myself.

“
You can’t be killed
by a zombie bite correct
?
It can only
sicken you
?”

Incorrect. I can most certainly be killed by an untreated
bite. I can also be turned by a zombie bite. It would take a lot longer to fuck
me up than your average bear, but if I can’t let nature do its work and heal me
up, I’m just as dead as anyone else.

I ran straight into the nearest house. I damn near shattered
the flimsy front door with my shoulder, but after stumbling around the house
for a few moments I was breaking through the back door as well and racing
across the small yard.

At the rear of the backyard, was a ten foot high rock wall.
I picked up Merrick and tossed her over. I made a jump for it. And missed. I
jumped again. And missed. Merrick was barking at me from the top. I’m not sure
if she was just pissed because I tossed her or if she was telling me to hurry
up. Regardless, on the third jump I hooked my tomahawk over the edge and pulled
myself up.

It was a jump that would normally be no problem to me. I was
getting weaker and weaker. The zombies came through the house and filled the
yard just as I scrambled over the edge into another backyard. They were
climbing over one another in an effort to pursue me.

I paused for a moment to catch my breath and then I was on
the move again.

There was no reason to go through this house so we ran
towards the side gate and made our way to the front yard.

No luck. A mass of shamblers were already turning the corner
of the street to our left. It was a pretty bad situation. I knew I wasn’t going
to have enough energy to outdistance them. The zombie toxins were spreading
through my system way too fast. I decided to crash through house after house
and lose them that way.

Merrick and I bolted straight across the street and through
the front doors of the closest home. We had a pretty good head start on our
pursuers, but they had the numbers and their screams would only add to those
numbers.

We charged through the house and headed straight into the
backyard. I could hear the sound of an approaching helicopter from somewhere in
the distance. I didn’t bother looking for it. It would never be able to pick me
up because it would be swarmed upon landing.

We hopped over the backyard wall. Fortunately that wall
wasn’t as tall as the previous one, and we ended up in yet another backyard. We
went around to the side of the house and out the gate. The chopper was closer
now, but I still didn’t pay much attention to it. I was heading down this new
street and through another new house.

“
Do all the homes in
El Paso have rock walls in their backyards
?”

Pretty much. I’m sure there are a few odd balls, but for the
most part everyone on the West side uses a rock wall to separate their yards
and give themselves some privacy. The only thing that varies is the height of
the wall.

The rest of my evening went pretty much the same way. In a
house, out a house, through a yard, down the street. I was getting slower and
slower. My muscles were starting to cramp up hideously. I found myself having
to take breaks in order to catch my breath.

There were plenty of times in which I thought I finally lost
them only to be suddenly surrounded all over again. Fighting my way out of
those situations was becoming hazardous in my weakened state. At some point,
even swinging my tomahawk became tiresome and I drew my Sig out of its holster
and screwed on its silencer. It was a lot easier to shoot than chop.

The moments in which they caught up to me were the worst. I
had to start all over again in order to gain some distance. The zombie virus
was having a grand ole time with my body during all of this. The cramps in my
legs and arms were horrible. I was sweating profusely, my nose was running, I
was freezing cold and my stomach was in knots.

My body was about to fail me. In that, I had no doubts. The
only thing that kept me moving was my own stubborn refusal to die. Every now
and then, the helicopter would get close. I remember hearing it, but I never
bothered to look up. For all I knew, it was right above me and then I would
lose it along with the shamblers whenever I ducked into a new and random house.

“
This went on until
dawn
?”

Just about, but don’t get me wrong here, there were plenty
of breaks. I found little hiding places quite often enough. Sometimes it would
be in a house and sometimes in an abandoned car. Sometimes I was even able to
rest for a good half hour before the zombies would roust me out.

It was really bad as it got closer to day break. I was losing
consciousness and stumbling around instead of running. I don’t remember
crossing Mesa. I don’t remember taking refuge in a house that belonged to an
old high school friend of mine.

Suddenly, Merrick was tugging on my sleeve, and I was awake.
I had no idea where I was and no idea where my pursuers were. I was just
sitting in a dark hallway inside an even darker house.

I could barely breathe. I was dying.

If Merrick hadn’t awakened me, I probably would have just
died in my sleep.

I couldn’t run anymore. In fact, I was barely able to drag
myself to the nearest window and peer down on the street. Somehow, I had
managed to find a two story house and even climb up the stairs to the second
story. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood below. I saw a lot of zombies
running around, but they had nowhere near the numbers they had had earlier.

It looked like I was safe or at least safe from being eaten.
I had actually managed to give them all the slip even though I couldn’t
remember doing it. When I think about it now, it must have been pure dumb luck.
I must have slipped into my old buddy’s house at just the right moment, when
there were no searching eyes around to give me away.

Of course I didn’t know it was my old buddy’s house at the
time. I was half dead after all, and all I knew was that I had to heal myself.
That became my new pressing concern. I needed a water source.

There was actually blood, or some sort of bile leaking from
my eyes, ears and nose as I crawled from room to room in search of a bathroom.
I knew a running sink and a toilet weren’t going to be enough, so I passed the
first bathroom I came upon and continued to the last door in the hallway.

As luck would have it, the door led to the master bedroom
and inside the master bedroom was an enormous bathroom complete with a large
sunken tub. It was a good thing. At that point, I was having problems focusing.
I never would have made it down the stairs in search of a tub or shower on the
lower floors.

I vaguely remember pulling myself into the tub; then I must
have passed out. Merrick’s high pitched barking woke me up. I couldn’t have
been out too long; the sky in the window was still a nighttime sky. I needed to
turn the water on, but the pain in my joints was incredible. I could barely
move my arm to the faucet.

I tried to lift my back from the bottom of the tub in order
to reach the knobs, but the pain actually made me cry out in agony, and I fell
back almost immediately. I could no longer move enough to reach out and turn on
the water. I just couldn’t lift myself, but Merrick’s whiney and high pitched
bark kept me conscious.

I was just staring at the knob. It was so close and yet so
far away. Maybe I even laughed a little. My head was the last thing to drop.
The strain on my neck was just too much, and I could no longer hold my head up.
The thud my head made when it hit the porcelain actually hurt my ears, and I
remember doing just one final thing before I died.

I angrily kicked at the damn knob.

“
You died
?”

I might of. It sure felt like it, but that’s not the
important part. The important part was my temper tantrum. My kick actually
managed to lift up the knob. The tub began to fill up around me. I didn’t
actually recognize that I had achieved my goal, mind you. I was pretty much
dead to the world at that point.

The sun was out when I finally opened my eyes. Merrick was
whining again. She hates getting wet, and the tub had overflowed a long time
ago. I sat up immediately and turned off the water.

I sat up.

It took a moment to realize it, but I had actually managed
to heal. I started laughing. Then, I looked at the water and realized it was an
ugly brown color. It was also pretty damn cold, so I drained it out, cleaned up
the tub and refilled it with hot water.

I was far from being healed completely. My entire body was
on fire, and my head was pounding. Yet, I was still alive. I was on my way; I
just needed more time.

As the tub was filling up, I was able to take off my clothes
and drape them over an open window to dry in the morning sun. I went downstairs
to see how secure the house was. The front door was wide open, as was the back
door. I quietly closed each door and locked them up. There were a few shamblers
in the backyard, but they didn’t see me. When I was satisfied of my security, I
headed back upstairs and hopped back in the tub while Merrick played watch dog
for me.

It felt good to let the water do its magic. I was hurting
pretty bad. The funny thing was, I’ve taken some pretty serious injuries and
recovered rapidly once I came into contact with water or something green and
growing. The sheer amount of time it was taking to fix me up gave evidence to
how narrowly I escaped being turned.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

I kept wondering if there was something I did wrong. I was
wondering why the situation had gotten so badly out of control so rapidly. The
street was completely empty and then it was suddenly filled with the dead. It
was almost as if the zombies were hiding from us and laying in wait for our
arrival, but zombies don’t hide or lay in wait. Zombies mindlessly charge and
attack. Well, if the zombies were relatively brainless, that meant someone else
came in and set a trap for us, and we walked right into it.

A trap!

We walked into a trap!

I sat straight up in the bath. I was royally freaked out.
Nothing was amiss except for the panic attack I had just given poor Merrick. I
was still safe. I lowered myself back into the water and continued to heal.

“
A trap
?”

Yes, it had to be a trap. Someone had to have led all the
zombies into those houses and kept them there somehow, at least until we were
far enough away from the cars that driving away wasn’t an option. Someone must
have also gotten those survivors to the same street either before or after the
zombies were secured in the houses and backyards.

It was the only thing that made sense. If the zombies had
just happened to be in the neighborhood, they would have charged us
immediately. They wouldn’t have waited for some of us to get out of the Jeep
and look around. We had walked into a trap.

“
Okay, so you just
realized that someone set up a very deadly trap. Obviously, they wanted to kill
you. What were you thinking when the shock of the situation wore off
?”

I was thinking that someone was going to get their ass
kicked.

However, the first thing I needed to do was recover. I
needed time for that. When the water finally cooled, I left the tub feeling
much, much better. I wasn’t perfect and I was pretty much exhausted, but most
of the pain had receded.

The first thing I did was clean off my weapons. I had
somehow managed to unclick my utility belt before I climbed into the water. I
didn’t remember doing it, but I was glad that I did. Wet ammo wouldn’t exactly
help me out of a tight spot. Still, the belt was lying on the same floor that
was soaked due to the over filling tub. I dried the belt and weapons off as
best I could, laid the belt itself near the window to dry and climbed into the
large bed in the master bedroom. I had my Sig in my hand as I drifted off to
sleep. Merrick hopped up as well and curled up close. She put her head on my
lap. It’s probably a pretty common thing that dogs do, but at the moment it was
reassuring. I knew it was safe to close my eyes because she would watch over
me. I slept like a baby.