Wash’s finger pulled back slowly on the trigger. His gun was still pointed at Fannie Mae. I stepped in the path of his gun and pulled my trigger. He shot in our direction at the same time. Fannie Mae cried out behind me and pushed me, but I held my ground. I felt his bullet graze my arm, furrowing a path through the meat of my bicep. I cried out and fell to my knees.
My shot had gone completely wide of Wash. He grinned at me when I looked at him, his eye twitching madly. I was holding my bleeding arm and Fannie Mae was standing over me protectively. I tried to push her out of the way but she wouldn’t budge.
Shaggy’s voice broke the moment. “What are you doing, Washington? We’re surrounded by zombies and this is what you want to do? Kill each other?”
Washington turned to him. “Cork it, Shaggy. We’ll take care of the zombies after we take care of him. We’ll leave him wounded here for the zombies so they can have their little midnight snack. That’ll keep ‘em off us.”
Shaggy shook his head. “I don’t think so, Wash. I didn’t sign up for this crap. If you want to kill a teenager then you can do it without my help.”
He turned to go and Wash swung his gun to point at his back. I cried out a warning and tried to bring my shotgun to bear, but my arm was too weak. Wash grinned humorlessly at me and pulled the trigger. Shaggy stumbled and stopped, turning back to face us. His hand was holding his chest and blood was bubbling out of his mouth. I could see the question on his face. I could have answered it for him if I had any mind to. There was no reason. Wash had just gone insane. Snapped from the strain.
He tried to bring his gun up but Wash shot him again, twice. The second shot took off the top of his head.
Wash turned back to me. “See. That’s how you do it. Take off their head so they can’t get back up.” He took a step toward me. I’m guessing it was so he could get a better shot at my head.
That’s when a zombie rushed out of the darkness and bit him in the neck. He screamed and brought his gun around, spasmodically pulling the trigger. I guess he hadn’t counted his shots. His clip was empty. The zombie came around to his front and started tearing the flesh from his face. From behind me Fannie Mae said, “Oh my God.”
I saw it the same second that she did. The zombie was Barrett. He was horribly disfigured and barely recognizable as himself. Almost every bit of flesh was missing from his body. Internal parts and pieces were oozing from what looked like several hundred bites. Most of his face was missing, the flesh ripped into pieces. He smiled a deaths-head grin in my direction as he ripped Wash to shreds. I don’t know how I recognized him, but I just did. Some tilt to the head or set of the shoulders. Something. But it was definitely him.
I didn’t even feel Fannie Mae pulling at my armpits, trying to force me to my feet. One part of me knew that she was crying above me. I could hear the sobs coming from her as she tried to get me up. I instinctively helped her, digging my heels into the dirt and pushing up. My shotgun still lay cradled in my hand as I held it uselessly. I couldn’t shoot him. Not Barrett. Not my friend. Logically I knew there was no way it was really him. There was no part of him left.
Still, emotionally I thought that he’d just saved me from Wash. Wash had been about to shoot me in the head and Barrett intervened, eating him in my defense. I couldn’t repay that by killing him. Maybe another minute, another hour, another day away, I could. But not here. Not now.
Barrett stood motionless staring at me and Fannie Mae. I could see other zombies streaming out of the darkness behind him. They were moving slowly, inexorably, toward us. It’d be mere moments before they came upon us. Barrett’s mouth opened and the skin and gristle drizzled slowly from his mouth. He locked eyes on me and tilted his head to the side. I swear I could see his eyebrow cocking on his head. He took a step toward us, arms rising slowly in our direction. That zombie need to eat and eat and eat coming over him.
The world began to rush back in at me. The pain in my arm and the moans of Kevin on the ground, trying to get to his feet himself, but failing because he kept trying to use his broken hand. Fannie Mae’s hands yanked again at my armpits, bringing cries of my pain from my lips as she pulled the hurt muscle in my arm. Sound finally came back and I could hear her screaming at me to get up. I realized she’d been screaming the whole time.
I finally gained my feet, wobbly and at risk of falling for a moment.
“Come on. Come on. Come on.” Fannie Mae screamed from behind me. Neither one of us wanted to face Barrett.
I whispered an apology to Barrett as Fannie Mae and I turned to make our escape. He’d have wanted us to shoot him and take him out of this Hell but at the moment I just didn’t have it in me. We made it maybe three steps before Mason Smith stepped out of nowhere at us. His head was still cocked at that weird angle from his broken neck. Other than that he looked in perfect condition, if you ignored his pale skin and deep, sunken eyes. His face and hands were covered in blood and gore and it looked like he was wearing a red mask on the lower half of his face.
Neither one of us had time to react before he stepped forward and grabbed Fannie Mae’s arm. I cried out in warning as he almost delicately bit into her forearm. She screamed in pain and fear as the blood started spurting down. I swear Mason grinned at us. He let go of her arm and slid back into the darkness, disappearing from sight. I swore and looked back behind us. The other zombies had swarmed out and were now chowing down on Kevin and Wash. Barrett stood there shuffling ever so slowly forward, staring at me and Fannie Mae.
A few of the zombies were inching in our direction but that was when I took charge and started pulling Fannie Mae away from the horde. She was screaming inconsolably and staring at her arm in horror. I tried not to look at or think of it as we ran away. Stumbled away might be the right phrase. My arm throbbed in pain and my brain throbbed in terror, the pain in my leg was but a distant memory. All I could see was that bite on her arm.
The zombies could have probably overtaken us at any moment but for some reason they didn’t. We could hear the screams of the others behind us as we ran away. It only took us a few minutes to reach Fannie Mae’s trailer. She dug her keys out of her pocket with a wince and opened the door, shoving me inside.
I don’t know which of us was in more pain, but we managed to barricade the doors and windows as best we could and then I finally collapsed on the couch. Fannie Mae disappeared into the bathroom and I heard her rattling around for a minute before she came back out. She had a pill bottle in one hand and a first aid kit in the other. She put those down next to me and then went into the kitchen and got us some water.
She came down and sat in front of me on the floor, running a shaky hand through her hair. Her face was waxen and pale, her eyes sunken deep into her forehead. The bite on her arm was even whiter than her face, the jagged edges bleeding slowly as we sat there. She caught me looking at it.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“What?” I said wearily. I was so, so tired.
“The bite,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s throbbing a little but there’s surprisingly little pain.”