"We killed Andi, one of the wonder twins!"
"I know we were coming to help you, but everything happened so fast. Where's Jake?"
"Here." the man called weakly from in the grass.
Stepping over to him Dora reassessed her evaluation of him; he looked worse than shit. "Jake how long is it going to take before you heal up and can go?"
Jake moved both his hands into his stomach area and waved them around, then stared at Dora.
"It might be awhile, but minutes, hours or days? Are you still an asset or do Becka and I leave you and move on?'
"You go, I can't make it, I might be out for a while. I might never make it back. I have never been this torn up. I need to feed, that would speed up the process."
Dora stepped back from him automatically bringing up her shotgun.
"Yeah darling, you could just end the contract right here, but I like to think I've held up my end of the bargain."
Dora nodded once, curtly, then said to Becka, "We gotta take one of their vehicles, the truck. Let's get Willy loaded up."
"No." Willy's voice was strong.
"We need to catch up with the others, c'mon Becka."
"No Dora. She bit me, you know what that means. I'm dead, just go…you know what you have to do first."
Realization hit Dora then and she looked at the shotgun then to Willy, "Oh Willy, I don't think…"
"I don't want to come back as one of them. Do it and go. I'm dead. Jeff told us this might happen, where we have to choose between what's hard and easy. Just do it and go."
Dora raised the gun and sighted down the barrel at the boy's head, her finger tightened on the trigger, sweat broke out on her forehead, then she lowered the barrel and sighed, "I can't. Becka?"
The girl held her hands out in front of her, "No, no! Not Willy! I couldn't"
"Well shit. Willy what can we do?"
"Leave me the gun. Make sure it is loaded. Then get out of here."
Dora was about to complain that it was their only gun, then nodded, removing a couple shells from her pockets and reloading the weapon before sitting it down by the boy. She leaned over him and whispered, "Sorry Willy, sorry I couldn't do it. I just…"
"It is okay Dora, I understand, I can do this. Now go save the rest of them. You gotta go."
Dora leaned over and hugged the boy, his body seemed so light, so frail and his skin was so pale from blood loss that she couldn't believe he was even still conscious. "Go." He said one more time.
Rising and gathering up Becka, Dora headed to the ranger and got in. In moments the two were gone, racing down the road where the buses had disappeared a mere five minutes before. In the grass in the median the boy and the zombie lay, one dying the other slowly healing. The boy raised his head, "Jake?"
"Yeah Willy?" Jake replied tilting himself over to look at the young man.
"I am still alive Jake. But I am going to die. You could help them, if you could heal up again."
" I know Willy."
"I don't want to come back Jake, when you are done."
"Okay Willy." said Jake, as he slowly dragged himself towards the boy through the grass.
Chapter 42
When the last bus in the line was slammed into from behind Paige was sitting in the seat directly behind Ken, the driver. Their bus, because it was last in line had two other adults on it, and mostly older kids, although there were still a couple nine year olds that simply wouldn't fit on the other vehicles. They were all armed and prepared when the trip began, but as the vehicle smashed in them the discipline vanished and was replaced by worry.
There were sounds of fighting in the space that had been left at the very rear of the bus, that fighting compartment was invisible to those at the front of the bus, it was divided by a huge pile of boxes, crates and backpacks, not to mention other supplies, which formed a wall between the two areas. After the sounds of fighting the pile of supplies wiggled around a bit as if it were being moved, then one of the wonder twins burrowed through the bags and boxes to appear on the human side behind the last seat.
One minute there was nothing there, the next there was a raging tornado of death swirling about the rear seats. Paige pulled her shotgun in from the window where she had it aimed a moment before. She was the first to get her gun turned around, but not the first to fire. There were too many people fleeing death in her way. The oldest man in Doraville, Sinclair James didn't run from the girl. Sinclair was an old African American with gray hair cut close to his scalp, he was a tall, full man who said he would die fighting if he had to die and Paige watched him prove it. To his credit Sinclair did get off one shot, it flew into the ceiling, tearing a patch of sky there for all to view, then the little zombie girl was on him, smashing with her fists, beating him about the head and neck. The man brought his rifle butt up in a dirty trick move that he had probably learned in the army sixty years ago, this one caught he girl by surprise and deformed her small jaw when it rocked her head back, but it was only a moment's respite. When she came around again she struck Sinclair's legs, one after the other, the man toppled forward and the girl let him fall, while she licked the blood off of one fist.
The zombie girl was too short and there were too many people in the way for Paige to get a good shot at her, even with Sinclair was out of the way. The only other adult was leading the charge for the front door screaming for Ken to open it and let her out, but one of the teenage girls had enough sense to brace her shotgun on a seat and take a shot at the pint sized zombie; that girl was the next to die. Paige didn't see it so much as hear it, she refocused on the pile of baggage at the rear of the bus and waited.
The other zombies in the back appeared to be tossing their supplies and bags out of the emergency door to make a path into the main area of the bus. Idly Paige wondered what had happened to Gus and Cliff, the two boys who had volunteered to sit in the small cleared out space to act as tail gunners, 'Nothing good', she thought to herself as she aimed at the shifting bags. Her patience was rewarded when she saw a head appear behind a moved bag, she fired calmly and despite the movement of the bus she knew she had killed the zombie.
The zombie girl finished up with the teenager and started killing the kids near the back of the pack, grabbing one of the younger ones she tossed him back towards the luggage like so much meat. The screaming youth slammed into the top of the pile of bags, burst through, taking a half dozen bags with him and then screamed as he tumbled through the open emergency exit and out the back door. Paige didn't flinch, even when she saw Steve run over the kid with his truck.
"Fuck, you are a nasty little bitch." she said, still trying to get a bead on the girl.
It was no use the girl had ducked under the seats and pulled another teenager to her doom, with everyone on the bus screaming Paige would have thought she couldn't hear the girl's last frantic yells, unfortunately she could. At the rear of the bus she caught sight of two zombies hiding behind the baggage as it slowly settled around them. Paige pulled herself up fully into the seat, sitting on her legs so she wouldn't have the unpleasant surprise of being pulled under like a seal by a hunting shark. One of the zombies back there was Jim Tiller, the other was some super that Paige hadn't seen before. She sighted down the barrel of her shotgun and took four shots at the other zombie, the first missed him by a good margin, the second hit him in the upper thigh, spraying dark zombie blood all over the inside of the back of the bus. The third shot was intercepted by a teenage boy's head as he jumped up into her line of sight trying to escape the little super zombie underneath him. His blood sprayed over the two rows of passengers behind him and onto the ceiling of the bus. Paige didn't let the friendly fire distract her, the kids had all been warned to stay down and there would be time enough for mourning her mistakes later, if she lived.