She collapsed to the ground in a heap, pulling Stubby down on top of her. Neither of them were moving. I sensed Felix taking a step forward and held my hand out to him. “No. Wait. Hold your post.”
Stubby began to twitch on top of her. He finally got his hands on the ground and pushed. Inch by inch her gore-streaked forearm appeared out of his throat. He shook his head like a dog as he tried to get the last of her hand out. Broken teeth, spit and blood flew everywhere around him as he worked her hand from his mouth. It finally came out and flopped down onto the ground. It was clutching what looked like a lung.
He turned to face us, sensing food. His mouth was an open, gaping ruin. I don’t even know that he had anything left to eat us with. Felix cursed or prayed to his god some more behind me as I stepped forward, chambering another round, and blew off Stubby’s head. He collapsed to the ground in a heap.
I turned around to look at the others. They were staring at me like they’d seen a ghost.
“What?”
None of them said anything. I took two more shells out of my pocket, quickly reloading the gun. I bent over and picked up Stubby’s flashlight and shone it behind us. I didn’t see any more of the zombies, but…
“They never seem to travel alone,” I said to the group. “Be on watch. You see how quickly this can turn.”
I looked at them again. They kept looking around them and back at me as if they couldn’t understand what they were seeing.
“What?” I asked again, exasperated. When I didn’t get an answer I said, “Let’s go. I’ll take rearguard.”
So we went on. Slower than ever.
16.
Time has no meaning in the middle of the dark. It could have been five, 10, or 20 minutes before we reached the cluster of cars. There’s no way to tell when your adrenaline is pumping on high and your heart is beating five thousand times a minute. You’re wet and soaked from the rain and your mouth is dry from the fear and you want only to be somewhere safe. Somewhere where the monsters can’t find you. Maybe even somewhere you can pull the blanket over your eyes and huddle and hide and weep for friends lost.
We tiptoed through the darkness and arrived at the car park some interminable time later in total silence. I doubt there was a man with us who didn’t wish that he hadn’t volunteered for this little rescue/suicide mission. I also doubted any one of us would make it out alive.
Silence greeted us, silently of course, as we stood in the car park. The stupid kid had finally shut up, right when we’d got there. None of us really felt like screaming for the kid and asking him where he was. The four of us looked at each other from our little square, stealing sidelong glances and wondering what we should do next.
“What should we do next?” Felix asked.
Washington nodded at me and whispered, “Any ideas, Duke?” I guess killing a few zombies while the men around me stood there doing nothing had raise my stock in their eyes.
I raised my eyebrow at him. Unfortunately I think the trick was lost on him in the darkness. “Well, we can either stand here with our thumbs up our asses or start looking for him.”
He grimaced at me and rolled his eyes. “How do we do that, genius?”
I eyed the 20 or so cars sitting there and then did a slow circle, turning in place. Everything was quiet. Dare I say that it was too quiet? Only the sounds of our shoes squishing in the mud made any noise at all. “We’re here,” I said. “We might as well call out for him. If the zombies are coming, they’re already coming. They heard our shots and the kid has been screaming for God knows how long.”
Washington nodded and said, “All righty.” Next thing I knew he was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Hey, kid! We’re here! Where are you?”
He yelled a few more times and then stopped, listening. Finally we heard a faint: “I’m here. Please help me.”
“That’s helpful,” I muttered.
We shone our flashlights at the cars. About four cars back we finally saw a hand waving and a head stuck up from a backseat. It looked like a boy in his early teens. Maybe thirteen. I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, that’s when Felix started shouting. Isn’t that always the way?
He was shining his flashlight behind us, behind me to be perfectly frank. Almost instinctively I dropped to the ground and rolled to my back. There was a horde of zombies coming our way. Thankfully none were in grabbing distance of me, so I only looked like a complete dumbass. Washington looked down and a ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Help me up,” I said, holding out my hand. He pulled me easily to my feet.
“What do we do?” He asked.
The zombies were shambling slowly toward us, arms already held out beseechingly in our direction. There were no more than 20 in the pack; maybe 15. I looked quickly through the faces for Barrett but he wasn’t in the group. Mr. Haskett was, though, shuffling in his underwear. Mrs. Banks, a friend of my mom’s who usually spent the day in chocolate heaven and watching the soaps. Chocolate and other goo was trickling from her mouth. The zombies were in various states of disarray. Some had disgusting bits dangling here and there and were missing some parts. Others looked almost normal, like they were just out on a Saturday night stroll and happened to be tagging along with the group. I somehow doubted that was really the case.
I glanced around at the others. They all looked sick to their stomach (Rodriguez threw up as my gaze crossed his) but resolute. I thought that maybe none of them would falter. “Well,” I said in answer to Washington’s question, “how about we blow them away? They’re between us and the House.”
He nodded. I could see his eyes calculating the odds. “Rodriguez, go get that boy out of the car and bring him back here.”
Rodriguez eyed the empty space between us and the car and then wiped the chunky bile off his face with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, boss.” He ran towards the cars.
Washington looked at me and Felix. “You guys ready?”
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Felix just nodded.
We spread out in a line like gunslingers out of an old West movie. All we needed was a tumbleweed going past and frightened townspeople huddled behind us to make it right. A clock tower tolling the hour. And the sun of high noon, too. That would have been helpful. I raised my shotgun to my shoulder and sighted on a zombie. I wasn’t sure how well the shotgun would work from the now 15 feet or so that was between us but I was willing to give it a try.
Before I could fire my shot a blast went off right next to my head.
“Jesus, Washington. Warn a guy why don’t you?” He grinned at me. I looked at the zombies. One of them was now on the ground and a few behind him were falling over as they tripped on the body. I guess the shotgun was deadly enough from this distance after all. “Good shot.”
“You can’t be the one having all the fun,” he said.
We set to firing with a will. Not every shot found its mark but quite a few did. It’s not like in the movies where suddenly everyone is a crack shot and can hit the zombies right between the eyes. Still, we did manage to fell half of them within the first few seconds of the firefight – not that it was a firefight as such since they weren’t exactly firing back, they just kept coming. The seven or eight that were left were no more than 10 feet from us when I got down to one knee and started reloading my shotgun. I had two shells in when I turned around to see what was taking Rodriguez so long.