Contagious (23 page)

“
Not right now,” I speculated. “I suppose inside the quarantines the government will want to maintain order. And I would hope people wouldn’t cause any problems. Maybe they’re threatened into good behavior, like act up and we’ll put you out with the infected, starving rest of the world.”

“
They don’t know about us, do they?” Jason leaned forward, not wearing his seatbelt.

“
No, I’m sure they don’t,” Padraic answered. “They would have sent someone by now.”

“
Oh yeah,” I interjected. “Sent someone to save the sick, dying people they left at the hospital.” The ramifications of my sentence hung heavy in the air. No one spoke again until we rolled into the town. “Holy shit,” I swore. Zombies milled about the streets. There weren’t a ton of them—that we could see—but it was enough to give me Goosebumps. A few of them could be classified in Raeya’s ‘gummy’ phase. They perked up when they saw the movement of the truck.

Seven. I counted seven. I could easily take them out, especially the slow moving ones. I wasn’t sure if the echoing gunfire would draw more in, if there were more of course. I could attempt to shoot them with the bow.

We bypassed them all together, wanting to get to the store. The truck slowly rolled down the street. The closer we got to the grocery store, the fewer zombies we saw. When we pulled into the parking lot, there were none. Something wasn’t right—other than the fact that zombies existed—about that. I had a bad feeling. We needed to use it to our advantage.

The parking lot wasn’t empty, nor was it full. It held enough cars to leave me with the impression that the outbreak happened during normal business hours, much like it had in Indy. Padraic pulled up to the motion activated doors. They didn’t open, but it’s not like I expected them to. I got out and tried to push them open with no avail.

“
Locked,” I told the guys when I got back into the pickup. My eyes scanned the lot. I found what I was looking for right away. “Go over there. I have a plan.” Padraic backed the truck up and away from the door. “Keep the safeties on your guns, too.”

“
What are you doing, Orissa?” Padraic asked, his blue eyes clouded with worry.

“
Getting us into the store. Be ready.” I opened the door and sprinted out to a brand new truck. I hopped in the back, used the butt of my rifle to knock the lock off the toolbox. I grabbed what I needed and ran to an old, crappy car. As I hoped, the door wasn’t locked; no one locked their doors in small towns like these. I crouched down in the front and got to work. It had been a while since I’d done this, though, like riding a bike, hot wiring a car wasn’t something you easily forget how to do.

I backed the car out and lined it up with the front doors of the store. Gripping the steering wheel, I pushed the gas pedal all the way down. The engine roared and the tires squealed. I closed my eyes as I crashed through the front of the store. Glass and metal rained down on me. I slammed on the breaks before I crashed into the registers. With a lot of crunching under the tires, I backed up and out of the store. I waved Padraic in, circling my fingers to signal for him to back into the store so we could load food right into the bed.

I killed three zombies on our hunt for food. I put my foot on their decaying bodies and yanked the arrows out, wiping them clean on whatever the zombie was wearing. We each took a cart and hit an aisle. In no time, the bed of the truck was full. It was an extremely satisfying sight.

Thinking luck was for once on our side, we got back into the truck. There was a clothing store on the next street over. We all needed winter jackets and if I could, I wanted to grab a pair of better fitting boots for Raeya since the riding boots were a half size too small. We heard the screaming before we saw the horde of zombies.

“
Janey Mac,” Padraic swore. I put my hand over my mouth. I had seen zombies crowd around a live body before, ripping and clawing at their food madly, when Jason and I were in the dorm. The victim had been an infected girl, who technically was alive with half her brain damaged and unable to feel pain. Whoever was screaming was alive, very alive. That was why there were no zombies or crazies at the grocery store. They had followed someone here.

The screaming stopped.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I rolled down my window and opened the front door. Using the open window to steady the gun, I aimed and fired, sending three bullets into three zombie’s heads. Too busy with the fresh meat, the gunfire was ignored by the monsters.

But not by the three living people who were hiding under a car. One of them shouted. My mind raced and my heart pounded. I struggled to keep my hands from shaking so I could keep dropping the zombies.

“
What do we do?” Padraic frantically asked me, raising his gun. He forgot to flick the safety off.

“
I-I don’t know,” I stammered. The people were yards away. A shit ton of zombies and a drainage ditch separated us, making driving to their side impossible unless we went down the street to cross a bridge. I emptied my cartridge. “Drive to them.”

“
Ok,” Padraic put the truck in reverse and spun us around. In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of someone running and waving.

“
No!” I shouted, spinning around. They must have thought we didn’t see them. They must have thought we were leaving. She was young; her blonde curls blew slightly in the cold air. She shouted something incoherent, which quickly turned into a strangled cry.

A crazy was on her, doing its best to sink its teeth into her skin and rip open her stomach. Padraic slammed on the brakes. I jumped out of the car, raising the M9. I pulled the trigger, forgetting it was empty. Jason handed me a rifle.

I held it up, aimed, and didn’t fire. The crazy’s head was now close to the girl’s. She was putting up a good fight, using something she had found on the ground to keep the crazy’s face away from her skin. I exhaled, telling myself it’s now or never. The crazy’s head bobbed in and out of view. If it would just hold still…I fired.

And missed.

I aimed again, this time at its side, which was a steadier target than the head. I hit it, though it had no instant effect. Before it had the chance to bleed to death, three zombies did their death march to the site. I shot again, hitting one right between the eyes. Padraic and Jason were shooting at the infected now too. I didn’t bother to tell them that their .22s didn’t pack any punch at this distance.

Where one zombie went down, two took its place. We were horribly outnumbered. The only hope the girl had at this point was getting away. She was still fighting the crazy. If she had any sense, she would reach down, stick her fingers in the bullet hole and rip open his flesh even more. The fucker was taking an awfully long time to bleed to death.

Another scream pierced the air. The zombies had found the others’ hiding place. A fat zombie in overalls dragged a little boy out by the ankle. I fired my last round into his face. I had to stop and reload. “Dammit!” I yelled, terrified and frustrated. Jason and Padraic didn’t know how to load the cartridges. I fumbled with the bullets, my fingers going numb in my anxious haste.

I was too late. Another zombie was on the little boy in seconds. It bit a chunk of his skin off, using its rotting hands to shove it into its mouth. There was one more person under the car. I dropped the cartridge. I wanted to scream. I wanted to personally kill every single zombie in this parking lot. When the M9 was finally loaded, I emptied it in seconds, killing seven zombies.

The little boy was still screaming. The zombies circled around him. Padraic must have watched me load the cartridge a few seconds ago because he was busily working on filling another. I stuck it into the gun with a click and looked for the girl.

A gruesome circle of death and filth surrounded her. I felt sick. I froze, unable to look away.

“
Orissa!” Jason shouted, jolting me back to the here and now. “Look!”

The zombies that had feasted on the first victim were dispersing, coming toward us. Running toward us. Running?

“
Get in!” Padraic said. We dove back into the truck. Padraic sped off. We flew down the road and over the bridge. The third person had made it out from under the car. He was running toward us. He wasn’t fast enough. There were so many of them, coming from all directions. I shot at anything that moved.

But they got to him first. We sat there in horror as the zombies tore into his body, eating his organs and drinking his blood. When it sunk in that there was nothing left, Padraic turned the truck around. No one uttered a word the entire way home.

We parked near the front door, backing up to the porch so we could easily get the food out. Padraic cut the engine and looked at me and then Jason.

“
This didn’t happen.” I knew my lips were moving and sound was coming out but I wasn’t fully aware of what I was saying. “No one needs to know about this,” I spoke slowly. “There’s no need for them to know that the only living people we’ve encountered just got eaten alive.”

“
Yeah,” Padraic agreed. “We got the food and came right back. There were zombies but not that many.”

“
The most eventful thing was Orissa hot wiring a car,” Jason said numbly.

“
Yes,” I affirmed.

The three of us were quiet and distant the rest of the evening. We blamed it on the trip and no one questioned us. Hilary and Raeya organized the food while Sonja and Lisa made dinner. Spencer kept watch and Lauren was upstairs doing God knows what. Zoe wanted to help us carry stuff in.

She was so weak. Her cough had worsened and she was running a fever. Padraic told her she should stay out of the cold and rest until someone could bring her dinner. She asked me to lay down with her because she was scared to be upstairs alone. She carried Finickus up with her, tucking him under the covers. The cat stayed for a few seconds as if to humor her before leaping away.

Padraic made a clean sweep of the pharmacy inside the grocery store. He brought up a handful of pills and a glass of water. He told Zoe to drink the whole thing. She nodded and took the pills one by one.

“
I’m tired, Orissa,” she told me, cuddling with her pink stuffed cat.

“
Close your eyes. I’ll be right here,” I promised.

She tried to say something but was overcome with a coughing fit. “And my lungs hurt.”

“
Padraic will take care of you.” I forced a smile. “Want me to read you a story?”

She nodded. I went to the bookshelf and picked out a book about a rich girl falling in love with their poor stable boy. Zoe was almost asleep when I finished the first chapter. I set the book down and turned off the bedside lamp.

“
Orissa?” she asked sleepily.

“
Yeah, Zoe?”

“
Are you scared to die?”

Maybe it was odd, after all I had seen today. But I answered without hesitation. “No.”

“
Really?”

“
Really,” I promised. I wasn’t afraid of death. If I died, it would be over. My worst fear wasn’t of dying, it was of living. Living, while everyone around me had their flesh savagely torn from their bodies to be shoved into the festering and ever-hungry mouths of zombies. It terrified me, right down to my very core, to be alive while the rest of the world was dead.

-Chapter 8-

We spent the next few weeks acting like a dysfunctional family. Raeya had drawn up chore charts. I felt like I was seven-years-old again, but the charts kept us organized and on task. I was scheduled to hunt every other day, alternating with teaching the others how to shoot. We drove ten miles away in case the echoing gun shots ever brought any wandering infected our way.

Today was a hunting day. A fresh layer of powder thin snow covered the earth. It was one of those mornings that could take your breath away. Everything was frozen and still, cast in beautiful, soft morning light.

I hunkered in my tree stand, bow and arrow at the ready. I knew I was safe in the tree. And I knew I would most likely have the upper hand, literally, in killing anything beneath me. If there was a place to relax, this was it. My own safety wasn’t my main concern anymore. I was constantly worried about the others. Zoe’s health was rapidly declining. Realistically, it was a miracle she’d made it this long. Padraic and Hilary were with her around the clock, doing anything and everything they could to prolong her short life.

The snow crunched underfoot. Slowly, I sat up, pulling the arrow back. I silently exhaled, eyes locking on my target. The arrow flew into the head of a buck. He collapsed, red blood staining and melting the glittering snow. I couldn’t look at the deer. I grabbed it by its feet and hauled it through the trees. I was exhausted, sweaty, and panting by the time I got to the ATV. With much difficulty, I hefted the heavy carcass onto the back, strapped it down, and rode back to the workshop.

As requested, I went inside to tell everyone I was back. Jason followed me back to the workshop so I could teach him how to gut and clean the deer. I was fast. It was something my grandpa was proud of me for. Once he killed three does just so he could show me off to his friends. I could do it in less than ten minutes as long as I had a sharp knife and saw.

I hated doing it. I hated hearing the skin rip. I hated seeing the dead, black eyes. I hated the frozen innocence on their faces. I hated the way the blood splattered and the way their organs just spilled right out. I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

This time around, I went slowly for Jason’s sake. It was different, I had to admit, when we were actually relying on the meat for survival. We each carried a large chunk of meat into the house to be made into jerky. I set it on the counter and began cutting the fat off.

“
That is disgusting,” Lauren said, wrinkling her nose. I didn’t respond. “Don’t you feel bad, killing an innocent animal for no reason?”