Escape from the Damned (APEX Predator Book 2) (25 page)

He stuck out his right hand.  “Ed, I’d be honored to have you in my unit; although, we do need to work on your regular Army elitism. The Nasty Guard is just as good as the spit and polished Army.”

The young man took his hand without breaking eye contact.  “Hurry back.”

SSgt Brown took another look through the kitchen window.  He could see four zombies.  Two were banging on the back door, one was walking around the house to the left and the fourth appeared to be headed for the door.  He couldn’t see any more than that.  He also noted that it had begun to rain.  That would make the trip more miserable, but it would also help cover their tracks.

He told the women what he saw.  He did a silent three count and then pulled the door open.  As he did, he shoved his pistol into the face of the first zombie and fired.  The zombie dropped to the ground, its brains splattering over the face of the second zombie. One second and one shot later, that zombie’s brains were nothing more than a pink mist.

The trio charged through the door.  Ms. Hebert ran directly for the third zombie, dispatching it with another point-blank headshot.  The others followed.  After running for about 300 meters the group slowed; heads turning in an attempt to acquire other threats.  There were none.

SSgt Brown led the group east.  Aside from the farmhouse they were leaving, the area was flat and open.  He could barely make out the tops of trees in the distance, but none were close.  The area was also devoid of any visible life.

An hour later, they reached the trees they had seen in the distance.  They were thick, old growth trees.  The floor of the forest was slick with mud and fallen leaves.  The sound of rain and their footsteps drowned out all other sound.  SSgt Brown slowed them down when they entered the trees.  The knot in his stomach grew.  He didn’t want a repeat of yesterday.  He knew he was closing in on the river a danger area.

As if on cue, he began to hear the sound of rain drops falling on water.  They must be close.  The forest floor began to rise at a slight angle.  This must be one of the protective dikes, he thought.  He picked up the pace in an attempt to get to the top of the rise.

In his haste, he momentarily let his guard down.  As he reached the top of the little rise, he turned to encourage the others along.  With his head turned and body still moving forward, he slammed into something cold and wet.  It knocked him to the ground.

For the briefest of seconds, he thought he’d hit a tree.  Wait; there wasn’t a tree in front of me.  Then he realized that the tree was trying to grab him.  Shit!  He slew his head around as he jammed his riffle between the hands of his attacker.  He came face to face with his worst nightmare.  The zombie’s teeth were a mere six inches from his nose.  It was all he could do to keep it that far away.

He shifted his weight to the right.  He and the zombie began to roll down the other side of the hill.  As they fell, some distance began to open between his face and the zombie’s teeth.  He was finally able to get the muzzle of his rifle under the monster’s jaw.  When they finally stopped rolling, he pulled the trigger, turning the top of the zombie’s head into a black-pink volcano.  The zombie went limp.

He wiggled out from underneath the dead weight and stood.  Gore had run down the barrel of his rifle, making the hand guards slick and threatening to foul the breach.  He turned the rifle over; emptying the semi coagulated black goo from the muzzle.

Suddenly, gunshots rang out from above him.  He lifted his head to see Ms. Hebert firing her pistol from the top of the hill in his direction.  Theresa was sliding down the wet hill on her butt.  Her shotgun was at the ready.  Bullets were whizzing around his head.

“Move, move!” Teresa was yelling.  She raised her shotgun as she reached the bottom of the hill a few feet away from him.  He rolled to the right.  She fired a second later.

He stood and looked in the direction they were firing.  Behind him there was a large group of zombies that had become trapped between the dike and the river.  The one he ran into must have finally figured out how to struggle up the steep sides.   Now, he and Theresa were down here with the ones too stupid to get out.

He raised his rifle and fired several shots into the heads of the closest zombies.  “C’mon!” he yelled to the girl.  He grabbed her and pulled her in his direction.  She scrambled to her feet and followed.

They were able to outpace the slower zombies as they stumbled over their dead comrades. After about a hundred yards, Theresa began to try to climb the hill.  She made it about 1/3 of the way up before she slid back down.  She tried again with the same result.

They looked up at Ms. Hebert.  She was not shooting anymore but was yelling at them to hurry.  She pointed back to the direction they had come.  SSgt Brown estimated that they were looking at 50 or 60 zombies.  He looked back to the north.  They were boxed in, with only one way to go.

He yelled at Ms. Hebert to keep an eye out in front of them, pointing north.  He pulled Theresa along the banks of the river.  Turning and firing at the approaching horde as they ran.

Every so often, he or Theresa would try to climb the slick dike.  No good.  It was just too steep and slick.  Every time they tried, they’d have to engage more zombies as they’d catch up.  Then they’d run again, only to try the dike again later.

Ms. Hebert would keep pace with them and tell them when they’d run out of time and would need to run again.  After the fourth time, she began to see the futility of trying to climb the dike.  She was just about to tell this to SSgt Brown when something grabbed her from behind.  In a panic, she threw her weight to the left and forward.  This had the effect of flipping her and her as yet unseen attacker down the hill.  She screamed as she did, her pistol falling from her hand.

SSgt Brown yelled when he saw the giant zombie grab the woman from behind.  His warning came too late.  He watched as they tumbled down the hill.  The zombie lost his grip on the woman as they fell.  She came to a stop several feet from the monster.  A gunshot behind her told her that someone had dispatched her assailant.

Pain shot through her left shoulder as she pushed herself off the ground.  Her right hand came back bloody when she felt for a wound.  Shit!  What had happened?  She didn’t remember feeling herself get injured.  Oh no!

“Help,” she squeaked as SSgt Brown came up to her.  She simply held up her bloody right hand.  He recoiled at the sight of the wounded woman.  His eyes betrayed his fears.  They were hers also.

“What happened?  Did it bite you?”

Tears began flowing down her cheeks.  “I…I don’t know.  I didn’t even know I was hurt until…”  She broke down crying, unable to consider the implication of her injury.

“C’mon,” he pulled her along the river bank.  She continued to move, although she was not sure how.  Her legs felt like rubber and her heart was racing.  Finally he stopped her.  He used his fingers to rip through the back of her shirt.  He poured water over the wound in an attempt to clear the blood.  The water stung, but also felt cool running down her back.

“You’re ok,” he announced.  “It’s not a bite.  You must have caught a tree branch or something when you rolled down the hill.”  He looked back at the horde of approaching zombies.  “Let’s get moving.”

As if to emphasize the point, Theresa’s shotgun exploded and another zombie fell under a hail of buckshot.  SSgt Brown sees the girl reach into her pocket as she turns to run with them.  Suddenly the blood drains from her face.  She withdraws an empty hand from her pocket.

“I’m out,” she cries.  She starts slapping her other pockets in a vain attempt to find more shells.  She shakes her head, tears streaming down her own cheeks.

“Go!” he yells to her.  “Run.”

The three ran as fast as they can.  While running, SSgt Brown pulls his pistol from its holster.  He tosses it to Theresa.  The fact that he didn’t give it to Ms. Hebert was not lost on either one of them.  They knew whom he trusted.

As quickly as it began, the rain stopped.  Every noise seemed to be magnified to those who had heard nothing but the pelting of rain for the last hour.  Now, they could hear their footsteps, as well as every zombie moan.

Ms. Hebert almost knocked SSgt Brown over as he suddenly stopped.  The moaning was no longer coming only from their rear.  It was coming from the front.  Shit!  The trap had closed.  He looked up at the dike.  It was steeper here than other places they’d tried.  He looked back.  The horde of zombies was closing in on them.  Nope.

Then, something caught his eye.  A tree on the edge of the river had apparently fallen recently.  It was still lying on the bank but its upper branches extended maybe 100 feet into the river.  That’s it. It’s the only place they had left to go.

“C’mon,” he ordered.  He led the two women into the water upstream from the fallen tree. The water was cold and the current was stronger than he anticipated.  He actually lost his footing as he raised his foot to take a step in the knee deep water.  The current pushed him into the tree trunk.

He soon realized that he would have to use the tree trunk in order to get deeper in the water.  He pulled himself from branch to branch.  It reminded him of climbing a tree, only he was going sideways, not up.  He looked back.  The women were following.

His heart skipped a beat once when Ms. Hebert’s hand slipped and she was pushed under the huge tree.  She emerged several seconds later, clutching one of the downstream branches.  He worked his way to her and helped her over the tree to the upstream side.  They continued into deeper and deeper water.  Soon his feet were no longer touching the bottom of the river.

He looked back at the banks of the river.  The herd of zombies that had been following them had reached the tree.  Several zombies tried to enter the water in an attempt to reach their prey.  None made it more than a few steps into the river before being swept away by the current.

The three survivors reached the top of the tree.  The trunk was still strong enough here to hold the weight of the trio against the current.   SSgt Brown couldn’t help but think about how cold the water was.  He began to hear teeth chatter.  He wasn’t sure if it was Theresa’s or Ms. Hebert’s.  He was so cold, it could have been his own teeth chattering for all he knew.

The group clung to the tree for what seemed like an eternity. As they did, several more zombies tried to enter the water.  As before, all were swept downstream by the currents of the Mighty Mississippi.  They were cold but at least they were safe

Suddenly, something brushed past SSgt Brown’s leg.  At first, he thought it might have been a fish.  Then he realized that it had actually struck his leg with some force.  Ah shit, he thought.  Please tell me there aren’t any gators here.  He knew there were alligators in the bayous, but honestly didn’t know if they inhabited the lower Mississippi.

Another object struck him. This time it hit his shoulder.  Was that a hand?  It felt like it had fingers.  He knew an alligator would strike with its mouth.  He’d feel teeth.  What the hell?  He looked up the river in an attempt to find out what was going on.

There, coming towards them in the current.  What was that?  It was black, and it stuck out of the water only a few inches.  It looked like a shirt.  It hit him like a hammer.  It was a shirt.  And inside of the shirt was a zombie.  They must be falling into the river somewhere upstream.

“Get on top of the log,” he quickly ordered.  As they complied, he explained what he’d just seen.  “Keep your legs and arms above the water.  I don’t know if these things can attack from underwater but let’s not find out.”

Suddenly the log shook from the impact of a body as it was driven into it by the current.  The zombie tried to grasp the tree as it did.  The branch it tried to grasp was much too large and slick.  They watched in horror as the zombie tumbled along in the current and presumably out to sea.

The onslaught of zombie flotsam and jetsam continued.  The group didn’t know for how long, nor how many zombies slammed into their tree.  Several actually were able to grasp branches.  Unfortunately for the offending zombies, the combined weight of flesh and current was too much for the smaller branches, which simply broke.  These zombies too continued on their journey past the cold and shivering trio.

It was Ms. Hebert who said finally said what they all thought.  “We’re gonna die on this log aren’t we?”

“No,” SSgt Brown said curtly.

“How do you know that?” she demanded.  “You have no idea what’s going to happen.”

“We’re not going to die,” he said again.

“Yes we are!  We’re alone out here.  We’re almost out of ammo.  We have nowhere else to run.  We have no food, no rescue, and no hope.  We’re done for.  I for one am not going to turn into one of those things.”

“We’re not dead and you’re not going to turn into a zombie,” answered Theresa.

“You shut up!  We wouldn’t be in this position if you hadn’t run out of bullets for that shotgun of yours.”

The girl took the shot like a punch in the gut.  Irrational as it was, she’d had the same thought several times over the past hour or so.

“At least I still have my gun,” she finally responded.  “Yours is somewhere, back on the hill, where you dropped it!”  The anger and hatred in her voice was unmistakable.

“You little Bitch!  You can’t talk to me like that.  I was fighting for my life.  Since you went and got yourself stuck down here, I was all alone.  You abandoned me.”