DISEASE: A Zombie Novel (12 page)

Danny turns to face the man, bluffing a quiet, angry stare.

“Tell me why I should have to explain myself to you, or anyone else. I have my orders from Lot and that should be good enough. If you don’t like what’s going on, I advise you to march yourself over to her room and tell her yourself!” Danny sweeps the rest of the crowd with a rock hard gaze. “That goes for all of you! Now give me the child and back the fuck off.”

People in the crowd look away, worried they might be recognized and the guards lower their weapons. Danny hides the nerve-wracked shake in his hands as he raises the uncooperative Alex over his shoulder once again.

Danny barrels into the blinding afternoon sunlight. He feels the guard’s eyes behind him, uncertain but afraid to stop him. It won’t be long before Lot is found, if she hasn’t been found already. When that happens, the entire community will be chomping at the bit to take revenge, but there’s no time to think about that now.

Alex struggles violently, slung across Danny’s shoulder like a ragdoll. He kicks and punches, yet somehow maintains a grip on the knapsack that flops in his hand. Danny wonders why the kid can’t see he’s being saved.

The ghouls spot them and the horde of ravenous flesh eaters, attracted by the still burning funeral pyre, scatter across the field. All eyes are on Danny and Alex, living and dead alike, as they hurtle toward the dark tree line across the overgrown field.

The recently deceased, hampered by rigor mortis and the rotten ones, who probably crawled from ancient graves, are slow. They lumber, dragging limbs as Danny darts around them. It’s the more intact and agile ones that pose the real danger right now. Not only are they fast, but they never get tired, and they are right on his heels.

He sprints, Casey’s bat in hand and a tight grip on Alex. The child may not realize it yet, but it’s better to take their chances out here, where they can at least defend themselves. Inside, man and boy alike are defenseless.

Danny breaks through the thick brush at the edge of the forest, his adrenaline surge carrying them quickly into its shadowy depths. Afraid to look back he barrels ahead clearing fallen logs and dried creek beds. His lungs burn and his uncooperative captive takes an exacting toll. Pushing harder than he ever has in his life, Danny runs until he thinks his body will give out. The creatures from the field are left far behind, unable to keep tabs on his rabbit like weaving.

He runs until he can’t anymore and, ready to collapse, he finally stops. He drops Alex to the ground but keeps a firm grip on the boy as he bends over, gasping. With one hand holding the kid’s arm, he coughs, and gulps in air.

Alex is scared and he kicks Danny in the ribs as hard as he can. The kick drives Danny to his knees, winding him even further, but he doesn’t lose his grip. Weary-eyed and breathless, he dodges another attack. The boy’s teeth click shut as a bite misses its mark.

“Listen—” Danny’s pushes Alex out to arm’s length. He blocks another vicious kick. This kid is no slouch, scrawny maybe, but all power. “Stop it. Listen to me.”

Alex throws a punch. Danny blocks.

“QUIT IT!”

That was dumb, he didn’t mean to shout, frustration and exhaustion are taking over. Danny peers anxiously into the woods, he’s not sure he can run again so soon.

He grabs Alex by the shoulders, trying to regain calm. They won’t make it like this, he needs the boy’s. Alex’s head jerks slightly. He looks everywhere but Danny’s face.

“I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry, okay? I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Alex, please listen, I just couldn’t see you—see you go through the same thing I did…” Danny’s throat catches.

It isn’t like him to be swept up in emotion. What’s going on?

Alex kicks Danny again, hard and almost gets away.

Danny angrily shakes the boy, his emotions veering all over the place. “Damn it, kid! You think Lot’s so great? Huh? You wanna go back there? You think I don’t know what she was doing? You think that’s normal?”

Alex stops struggling. Maybe Danny struck a nerve or maybe he’s just scared of the emotional and intense man shaking him and yelling in his face. Either way he just stares, and then the tick.

A twinge of shame creeps up on Danny. He’s acting like a lunatic.

“You need to understand something. It may seem safer back there, with Lot. She may make you feel special right now, but it won’t last. Sooner or later you’ll be a slave to her every impulse, and you won’t even know it. She’ll destroy everything you are.”

The kid continues to stare. Danny sighs heavily, nothing is getting through. “Alex, please. Do you really want to go back to the same lady that had Casey killed?”

Alex’s entire body jolts, as though he’s been shot. His knees give out and Danny fumbles, trying to keep the boy on his feet. So, the kid
is
listening!

Slowly, Alex regains his footing.

“Do you understand? I’m trying to help you. What Lot was doing to you, or making you do—it was wrong. I’m trying to save you from all that. I would have saved Casey if I could have.
I’m the good guy here
.”

There’s a loud crash and a creature lunges through the bushes. With no time to run Danny shoves Alex toward the nearest tree.

“CLIMB!”

Alex streaks from Danny’s arms and is up the thin tree, knapsack and all, in a flash.

Danny whips around to face his assailant. Casey’s bat lays on the ground nearby and he dives for it.

He swings at the creature. Wood strikes skull, sending a zing through Danny’s shoulders. The thing stumbles and then lurches forward, undeterred. Danny wails on the creature’s head again, driving it into the soft pine-needle bed underfoot.

Danny whacks the thing again as it tries to regain its footing. There’s no letting up, only when its head is demolished does the creature finally stop moving.

Still trying to catch his breath from the run, Danny looks up at Alex, who sits like a monkey boy on a branch. As he does, another creature breaks through the bush.
Shit.
Danny charges the creature and two more appear.

Danny rips away half of a ghoul’s decomposing face with the bat. Its head splits like a boiled peanut casing, exposing a black, gummied brain. The creature turns to chase Danny.

Without its protective skull, the thing’s brain droops halfway out of its head, tethered only by a flimsy brainstem. Danny brings the bat down on the dark, jellied blob, closing his eyes against the explosion of chunky black bits. The creature’s body falls to the ground mid-step.

The remaining two creatures attack in unison. Danny dodges them, almost backing up into yet another as it appears. The thing is huge, taller than Danny, and it wears a pair of bloodstained coveralls. Danny feels like a gladiator, fighting a losing battle against a pride of angry lions. All that’s missing is the crowd chanting wildly for his death.

Danny nails one of the three creatures with Casey’s bat and it drops to the ground, just for a second. He swivels himself away as the next attacks and kicks it in the face, the thing’s teeth coming too close to his arm—so close Danny can see the flesh caked between them.

The third creature lunges and misses its feet tangling in its own intestines, which hang from its burst stomach, slowing it for a minute.

Danny’s stamina is quickly evaporating. Sleepless nights and a hundred meter dash while carrying a fighting sack of potatoes doesn’t exactly make for a battle plan. He has to turn this fight around,
now
or it will be all for naught.

He spies a nearby tree with its lowest branch long ago snapped to a dangerous point. It’s a Hail Mary. Holding the bat horizontally between his hands Danny uses it as a ram, shoving the nearest of the creatures with all his might into the tree. The broken branch stabs through the back of the ghoul’s skull and erupts out the front, exploding forehead and black ooze. It struggles a moment more and then stops moving.

Danny turns to face the other two creatures as they attack. He sidesteps one and wallops the other in the face with the bat. Teeth and bone smash away as he sheers off the thing’s bottom jaw, sending it flying into the bushes. The creature’s sore-laden tongue unfurls, hanging down its neck like a fucked-up bolo tie, swinging with every movement.

The coverall-wearing creature attacks from behind and knocks Danny off his feet, sending Casey’s bat flying from his hand. The thing is strong and unwavering in its determination to consume Danny alive. His exhausted muscles burn as he wrestles with the creature’s massive frame.

The ghoul with the missing jaw charges them. Danny kicks at it and it grabs his foot, dragging him several feet through the dirt, trying doggedly to tear meat from his leg. The coverall-wearing creature is relentless. Its huge bloated stomach presses into Danny, crushing him under its weight, and it battles to shred flesh with its deadly teeth. It’s like wrestling a great white shark and Danny uses all his energy to fend it off.

Pain shoots through his knee, he feels like the smaller creature is trying to dislocate his leg. His arms shake with the exertion of keeping the big one from ripping off his face. Skin from the thing’s shoulders slides under Danny’s hands. It’s nearly impossible to stop it from biting him. He wrenches his face away from teeth. He can’t get away.

SLAM!

Coveralls lurches to the side.

SLAM!

Danny can’t understand what he’s seeing: knapsack wearing Alex wails on the larger creature’s head with Casey’s baseball bat. The thing stumbles, trying to get to its feet and Alex bashes it again… and again… and again…

Danny jerks with a sudden flourish of panic, pulling his leg away from the smaller creature. Blood and black ooze saturate his pant leg. He kicks the creature square in what remains of its face and it tumbles backward. With all the force he has left he springs on it and begins to stomp its face. Bone splits beneath the treads of his boot and he keeps stomping and kicking.

Next to him, Alex continues to smash larger creature’s head with the bat. Bits of skin, skull and teeth fly through the air like confetti. A rotten eye is forced from its socket and it lands with a little cloud of dirt.

Together the two blonds smash, and bash, until both creatures stop moving.

Danny looks over at Alex. The boy’s chest heaves and specks of flesh and blood spot him from head to toe. He has a death grip on the blood-stained bat and his eyes are wild and angry.

Trying to catch his breath, Danny walks over to Alex and crouches down, he gently pries Casey’s bat from the boy’s hands. There are a number of things flowing through Danny’s head at this very moment, but at the forefront is the thought that this seemingly dumb, mute kid has a lot more going on than he’s given credit for.

This kid, this
kid
just saved Danny’s life by bashing the brains out of a flesh-eating monster that used to be human. No matter how long he lives in this world, he will never get used to these kinds of facts. Danny pats Alex’s head awkwardly.

Suddenly, Danny remembers his leg. He frantically pulls up his pants to reveal bruised, but unbroken skin. Nearby lays the severed bottom jaw. It would only take one tooth, maybe just one scratch—it’s not an experiment Danny’s willing to perform.

More creatures are likely to follow their decimated friends and they must move soon, but first, Danny feels like he’s swallowed a desert. He hopes Alex is hiding a bottle of water in his prized pack. He points at it. “Got any water in that thing?”

Alex stares at Danny blankly.

Of course, no response. If Danny hadn’t witnessed with his own eyes what just happened, he wouldn’t believe it. “Mind if I have a look?”

Another blank stare. It makes Danny feel like he’s speaking some sort of archaic dead language. He rolls his eyes at the speechless boy.

“Avez vous de l’eau, s’il vous plait?”

Nothing. Oh well. He spins the boy around and unzips his bag. The name “Alex G.” is written in permanent marker on the inside flap. Is Alex actually the kid’s name, Danny wonders, or did Casey just start calling him that because it’s written here?

He rummages through the bag. Inside he finds a copy of
Robinson Crusoe
, a book of matches with a single match, an old threadbare t-shirt, a bag of marbles, a can opener, and half a bottle of aftershave. No water, dammit. Bemused Danny removes the bottle of aftershave. “A little young for this, aren’t you?”

Alex spins around and swipes the bottle from Danny’s hand, shooting him a dirty look. He shoves it huffily back into his knapsack and zips the entire thing up. Despite his exhaustion, Danny smiles. This kid is pretty funny, and at least he’s not trying to get away anymore, it only took a near death experience to prove he wasn’t the enemy. Danny holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

Alex stares at him blankly and Danny suddenly feels like he’s looking into a mirror, if that mirror reflected the past.

Breaking branches cut short their little moment. Danny groans inwardly and jumps to his feet. A slow, lumbering creature breaks through the bushes, its body barely holding itself together.

Danny grabs Alex’s hand and they run.

***

Thick Marge and Arnold are solemn. Lot sits before them, frail and shaking. Her wounded arm wrapped up in a homemade sling. Even through the fabric they can see the swelling. She is weak and unsteady, lifting a teacup with her trembling good arm. Opie, like the ever-present lap dog he is, stands grimly at her side.

“I understand Opie spoke with you both earlier in the day about the problem we were experiencing.” Two heads bob up and down, their eyes begging to please.

Lot presses her lips together thoughtfully. “Then you can see how I would be disappointed by what’s happened. Every person in this room was made aware of Danny’s fragile state—that he was suffering a mental breakdown. How is it then that he was allowed to lash out, violently attack me, and kidnap a child?”

Thick Marge opens her mouth to say something, but Opie shakes his head imposingly. She quiets down.

“The fact is that this is a terrible lapse in security. Everyone underestimated him.”

The guards nod in docile agreement, fear bubbling just below the surface. Lot’s softens her face and breathes out, cool and calculated. “Everyone, including me.”

Silence hangs in the room. Thick Marge and Arnold are unsure what to say. The military man absently scratches at his USMC tattoo. “Do you have any idea why he would do something like this?” he asks.

Lot searches the bottom of her cup. She nods wanly and bats misty eyes. “Unfortunately, yes and I suppose the cat’s out of the bag now.”

The guards lean in a little closer and Lot’s voice wavers.

“I love Danny so much. I thought if I could just keep him under control… I didn’t think he was truly capable of something like this… I just couldn’t face what he is, didn’t want to believe it, and now he has taken that poor, innocent little boy… Who knows what he plans on doing? I tried hiding his deviant ways, I thought I could help him, cure him.”