The Zombie Virus (Book 1) (20 page)

I shot the last of my mag at the closest
group as Kera helped my limping wife across the street. I changed
mags, then ran over and got on the other side of Holly, supporting
her while she tried to run. She was limping badly and crying.

“My ankle,” she grunted in pain. “I don’t
think it’s broken but I’m not going anywhere fast on it.” She shook
her head in disgust at herself.,= “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it,” I said kissing
her on the cheek, silently vowing to myself to protect her at all
costs.

Less than a fifty yards ahead of us Frank and
Jeremy had finally stopped to look back. I saw the concerned look
and fear spread across Jeremy’s face when he realized we weren’t
right behind him. He started back toward us.

“No!” I yelled and Frank grabbed my son by
the shoulder and held him back. “Get him to the truck!” I screamed
at them. “We’ll meet you there!”

The infected were already between us, he
couldn’t have made it back if he tried. “Papa! No!” Jeremy cried,
trying to break free from Frank’s grasp.

“Go!” I yelled back. “We’ll be okay. I’ll see
you soon!”

Frank dragged him reluctantly away while the
infected closed in on them and us. I caught one last glimpse of my
son as they crested the rise above where the truck was. Jeremy
looked back once then disappeared over the edge. I heard the .44
fire once and Jeremy’s .223 discharge twice.

Holly’s face paled when he vanished over the
rise. “Oh God, Jeremy!” she cried. “Steven, what are we going to
do?”

I looked desperately for a way out, lifting
my rifle and firing at two Loonies who were closing in fast and
thanking God when they both dropped. Kera unloaded on several to
our left, the shotgun loads tearing through them with ghastly
results. Three of them dropped in a bloody spray of gore.

“That was my last clip,” Kera uttered,
looking hopelessly at the approaching hordes. She pulled the empty
mag out of the shotgun and then slung the gun around her
shoulder.

Holly told Kera to take the Beretta out of
her left leg holster and gave her the spare magazine, and then
turned to me. “This is my last full mag, Steven,” she informed me,
stifling her tears as we stopped near the edge of the road, looking
for a way out. She remained propped between Kera and me, the insane
approaching us from every direction like an unstoppable tide.

I continued firing at individual Loonies as I
looked for a way out the deadly mess we found ourselves in. I
didn’t see any. The ‘tang’ sound of the bolt locking back informed
me that the magazine was empty. I deftly dropped out the old mag,
shoving it in my pocket and inserting the last 30 rounder into the
rifle and released the bolt.

“There’s not as many of them that way.” Holly
gestured with the barrel of her rifle west down the street to an
intersection where maybe a score of infected were approaching us at
a run. I didn’t see any other option. In every other direction the
crowds of demented killers were just too thick. Maybe we would have
a fighting chance to push through there.

Holly, Kera and I silently set off down the
road at as fast of a pace as we could manage with my wife limping
badly on her injured ankle. Holly let go of my shoulder and began
firing off rounds into the approaching group using Kera, who stood
much shorter than me, as a crutch. I fired my rifle to slow down
the approach of the Loonies from the other directions.

The swarms of infected would move slowly
until those in the lead spotted us, then they would break into a
dash to get to us. A hundred feet separated us from the approaching
group when my last mag ran dry. I pushed the rifle on its sling
onto my back and drew the Para from my leg rig with my right hand
and the Sig from my waist holster with my left. It would be all
close-in combat now.

Only about a dozen of the original twenty or
so Loonies remained on their feet down the street in front of us.
Holly’s well-aimed shots were thinning out their numbers, although
not by enough. We converged quickly.

Holly fired the last round from her AR and
then let it fall on its sling to her side. She calmly drew the Para
9mm from her right leg holster and extended it before her. We fired
in unison, dropping their numbers again by half before they were on
top of us.

I emptied the Para into a large sweaty man as
we tangled, finally dropping him after several shots. Another man
hit me from my side, forcing me off balance. I jammed the empty
pistol into his snapping jaws as we fell over, his fetid breath
puffing in my face, and we rolled on the rough pavement. I freed my
left arm and slammed the barrel of the Sig against his pulsing
temple while I pulled the trigger. The shot obliterated the other
side of his head and he fell dead beside me, bright red blood
pumping out of what was left of his brain.

Something grabbed onto my leg when I tried to
roll away from the infected corpse and looked down to see a
towheaded girl not much younger than Jeremy wearing a filthy floral
dress, trying to bite my leg. The loose material of my pants and
the strap of my drop leg holster confounded her efforts.

I kicked at her with my free leg, connecting
solidly with her nose, which flattened in an eruption of blood, and
she tumbled backwards off of me. Both Holly and Kera were
struggling nearby and were still firing their handguns.

The sound of Holly screaming filled my ears.
I scrambled to my feet and kicked again at the girl as she reached
for me. The snap of her arm breaking was loud even in the clamor of
the fighting around me. The girl let out a horrid screech but kept
coming, and was joined by a naked woman with homicidal blood red
eyes who lunged at me past the little girl, her clawed hands raking
my cheek and drawing blood.

I shot the woman in the chest, and she
stumbled backwards and fell onto her skinny butt. I kicked at the
kid again, sending her tumbling down the pavement.

The woman was back on her feet instantly, a
small red puckered hole displayed prominently where her right
nipple used to be. I shot her again, through the mouth, watching in
satisfaction as red mist erupted into the waning light behind her
head. She dropped silently to the warm pavement.

The little girl was up and at me again, her
good arm reaching for me, teeth snapping, blood pouring from her
ruptured nose. I rammed the heel of my boot into her knee. The
femur snapped and tore through just above the kneecap and she
tumbled to the ground beneath me. Reminding myself that they were
no longer human beings, I lifted my foot and brought it down hard
on her head, crushing her little skull into the asphalt.

Holly was on the ground a few yards away
fighting with an older man, both her pistols were gone and she was
using her hands to fend off his chomping, blood-tinged teeth. Blood
roiled from a wound in her forearm, making it difficult for her to
keep purchase with her slick red-coated hand. I spotted Kera
further down the street backing up from two more female Loonies,
one bleeding heavily from a gunshot to the leg, the other
tenaciously holding onto Kera’s white blouse and trying to pull her
in close.

I rushed to Holly and kicked the man in the
head as hard as I could. The bones in his neck cracked when my boot
connected, knocking him sideways off of her. I kneeled on his chest
and put a bullet in his head to ensure he wouldn’t get up, then
stood and turned toward Kera. She had shot the injured woman again,
killing her instantly, and was back-peddling from the other who
still had a firm grip on her blouse which was half torn off. She
held the gun pressed into the savage growling face of the Loony,
continuously pulling the trigger on the empty chamber.

The infected woman lunged forward and they
both fell over backward across the curb and onto the sidewalk. Kera
screamed ferociously as she tried to roll away from the biting
woman who was still holding onto the remains of the blouse which
she had ripped completely off.

Kera scooted backwards on her elbows wearing
nothing except her red tennis shoes and summer shorts. The frothing
creature with a mane of matted brown hair tossed aside the torn
garment and clawed its way after her. I took a shot while Kera was
clear and hit the Loony in the shoulder, nearly tearing its arm
from its body.

The woman turned her deadly red eyes to me
and snarled loudly. Forgetting Kera, she jumped to her feet and
charged toward me. I pulled the trigger again and the firing pin
clicked onto any empty chamber. I dropped the pistol, batting away
the woman’s reaching arm with one hand while punching her in the
face with the other. My fist connected with her chin and she fell
backwards, knocked out cold. I went up to her and crushed her
throat with my boot heel.

I bashed an infected man across the head with
my rifle as he came running up, knocking him to the ground, then
quickly bent to Holly, who was cradling her arm against her body
and sobbing while she laid curled up on the ground.

I was aware that more Loonies were
approaching fast. I picked up my Sig from beside her with one hand
and pulled her up with my other, slinging her arm around my
shoulder and set off as fast as I could guide her across the
intersection. Kera had gathered the remains of her blouse and
wrapped it around her bare shoulders, trying to cover her exposed
breasts. She picked up her dropped shotgun and ran over to help me
get Holly across the multi-lane road to the woods on the other
side.

The fight had lasted less than a minute, long
enough that the bulk of the Loonies had nearly caught up to us and
were only yards away.

CHAPTER 13

We were near panic when we pushed through the heavy
brush with the sound of the infected in close pursuit behind us.
Holly was sobbing, muttering “No! no! no! no!” over and over as we
dragged her between us into the thickening gloom. Blood was
dripping from her elbow, running in rivulets from her wound.

Blood was drying on my face from the deep
stinging gouges of the infected woman’s filthy nails. My heart was
in my stomach. I could only pray that Holly hadn’t been bitten,
that she had injured herself some other way, although whenever I
looked at the wound and saw the jagged outlines of teeth in the
flesh my insides knotted up even tighter.

“You’re going to be okay, baby,” I kept
telling her as we moved deeper into the forest. Kera, Holly and I
worked our way through the undergrowth and every once in a while I
would hear a muffled sob escape from Kera’s lips. Night was falling
and it was becoming difficult to pick our way through tangled weeds
and saplings beneath the forest canopy. One of us would trip and
stumble, causing everyone to tumble to the ground.

Finally, after Kera tripped again, causing
all of us to fall hard, we stayed down, listening quietly for any
sound of pursuit by the horde of diseased, enraged monsters. We
could hear them far back in the distance, a faint growl or wail,
but no more sounds of anything crashing through the forest
underbrush hot on our trail.

“I think we lost them,” I whispered. We sat
on the damp ground for a moment, breathing heavily from our long
run. I put a fresh mag in the Sig and chambered a round. At least I
was still armed.

“How’s your arm?” I asked Holly, trying to
mask the worry that was flooding my mind. Holly stiffly slipped the
rifle sling off of her shoulder and laid the Colt next to her side,
then examined her arm.

“I’m bit, Steven,” she sobbed. “I’m bit and
I’m going to turn into one of those monsters!”

“Oh shit,” Kera muttered under her breath,
scooting away from Holly’s side.

I sat there on the ground next to my beloved
wife, my mouth open in shock. I looked at her dark silhouette and
prayed that this was all a dream.

“Steven,” she whispered to me, desperation in
her voice, “you have to find Jeremy. You have to make sure he gets
to the farm safely. You have to tell him that I will always love
him.”

Tears were streaming down my face. I grabbed
her hands and pulled her tight to me, kissing her lightly on the
lips, feeling her warm breath mingle with mine.

“Don’t talk like that,” I said softly. “Maybe
you weren’t infected. Maybe the virus has mutated and isn’t
virulent anymore.” I said it hopefully, although I knew in my soul
that I was wrong.

She sighed and looked away. “No, sweetheart,”
she whispered sadly. “I can feel the disease inside me
already.”

“What are we going to do with her?” Kera
asked from the darkness a few yards away.

“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed at her. “If
you hadn’t shot at those things at the restaurant we would probably
all be on our way out of this shithole of a town now!”

“I had to shoot them!” she hissed back. “They
saw me and would have come through those glass doors like the
others did!”

“Bullshit!” I responded trying to stand up as
Kera stomped off deeper into the darkness, but felt Holly grasp my
hand tightly.

“Let it go, Steven, it won’t change what has
happened.” She slid her arms around me and pulled me back close,
our lips met and I kissed her gently again. She brushed her moist
lips across my cheek softly.

“Sit with me here, sweetheart,” she whispered
wearily, holding on to me tight. I looked down into her shadowed
eyes, trying to blink away the tears that threatened to obscure my
vision.

“I will love you for the rest of my life,” I
said, gently kissing her again.

“I have loved you from the moment I first saw
you, Steven,” she responded breathlessly. My arms tightened around
her as my stomach knotted and I choked back a sob.

“Shhh,” she comforted, laying her cheek
against mine. “You need to be strong for both of us, and for
Jeremy.”

I nodded my head into her fragrant hair as we
held each other. I could already feel the heat building in her body
in contrast to the cool of the burgeoning night. I pulled back
slightly and looked into her eyes, which reflected the light from
the rising moon. A frown flitted nervously across her face when she
looked back at me.