Taking It Back (25 page)

“Good. I’d hate to risk my ass for something like a cat or a dog,” Charlie said as he joined me.

“Who are you kidding?” I asked as I headed up the steep bank of the overpass. “You chased a cat three miles just because Rebecca thought it would be nice to have a kitty for Julia.”

“Yeah, but that was in the country, not in the middle of an infested suburb,” Charlie retorted.

“If I recall correctly, it was in the middle of downtown Freeport, through an area that hadn’t been secured yet and six zombies were chasing you as you chased the cat.”

“Still doesn’t change how I feel about this little hike,” Charlie said as he slipped on a bit of wet grass.

“No one asked you to come along,” I said, stopping near the top and checking for roaming Z’s.

“After all we’ve been through, you knew I’d be along, just like you’d come with me if I was going somewhere, no matter how stupid,” Charlie replied as he joined me near the top, his rifle balanced in one hand as he kept himself from falling with the other.

“True.” I didn’t see any immediate danger, so I hoisted myself up and over the guardrail. There were several cars on the bridge, but none occupied. By the looks of things, it seemed like someone had arranged the cars as a sort of defensive barricade. Nothing that would stop a determined zombie, but it would slow them down. The position of the cars made me wonder what was on the other side and if there were survivors somewhere.

Charlie tapped my shoulder and brought my attention back to the situation at hand. I looked out over the vast subdivision with its rows upon rows of houses, stacked neatly up against each other. If I had to guess, I would have said there were thousands of them, making the approximate number of zombies in the tens of thousands. But what really held my attention was the lone figure running down the street, pursued by roughly five hundred walking dead, with that number growing by the minute. Their groans were awful to hear, a wail of anguish and never-ending hunger.

Charlie sighted in the figure with his scope. “Woman. Early twenties. Looks like she’s been surviving for a while. Got a pack, gun, knife, and what looks like a pipe.”

“Any cuts or blood on her?” I asked, bringing my rifle up and attaching my scope. I didn’t use it often, but it did have its purposes, since I never got around to carrying a pair of binoculars.

“Not yet, but if she keeps on going the way she is, she’s going to be bloody,” Charlie said.

When I looked through my scope, I could see why. She was running towards us, but a group of zombies was coming at a cross road and would make the intersection before she would. On top of that, there were other zombies coming out of homes and holes, attracted to the noise of their brethren. In short order she was going to find herself surrounded and eaten. It wasn’t going to be pretty. The down side was we really couldn’t help her. Sure we could shoot down a bunch, but that would actually just waste ammo and only prolong the inevitable.

Charlie looked at me as if to ask the question we were both not wanting to answer. I shrugged and couldn’t see a solution. There was no way she was going to get out of this one unless she learned to fly in a hurry.

Suddenly, it hit me. Fly! Of course! “Cover me!” I yelled as I sprinted down the road. I needed to get to where I could be seen and heard by the besieged woman. Charlie moved over to the side of the road where he could brace his rifle to shoot more accurately. I ran down the road, making sure there weren’t any lurkers to make my life miserable and stopped within what I hoped was earshot of the running woman. The zombies who were going to cut her off had just emerged from the side street and I could see the woman pause. She drew her sidearm, looked at it, and then holstered it. I figured she was dangerously low on ammo and was contemplating finishing herself off as a last resort.

I jumped up onto a car so I could be seen. “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. The woman looked at me with a stunned expression, like the last thing she expected to see was a lunatic jumping on a car in the middle of zombie infested territory. Can’t say I blamed her. “Get up on the roofs and head this way! We have a boat!”

Hope surged in the woman’s young face as she sprinted for the nearest house and clambered up the iron railing on the side of the porch. There was a desperate moment when it looked like the gutter wasn’t going to hold her weight, but she swung her legs up just as the first zombies reached up to try to drag her down. She rolled up onto the roof and scrambled to the peak.

Sitting down and taking a breath, she looked over at me and yelled “Watch your back!”

I spun around on my car roof and fired a rifle round through the head of a small zombie that had managed to sneak around behind me. The heavy bullet blew his head apart like a ripe melon and he dropped into a pile of decaying flop. The shot galvanized the zombies on the ground who saw their original prey climb up out of reach. The horde that was chasing the woman turned their attention to me and started to head my way.

“Cross the houses on the roofs, head for the canal. We’ll wait for you there!” I yelled as I dropped off the car and sprinted back the way I came. I had no intention of sticking around any longer. I gave the woman a chance and if she chose to take it, great. If not, I tried.

Stealing a look back I saw the woman running down the shingles and leaping across the small space between the homes. It was only a six foot jump, but if she slipped she was dead. Talk about your hurdles of death.

I quickly outstripped the horde and headed back towards Charlie. He waved me past him and I took a breather as we watched the progress of the woman. The line of houses she was on took her on a curving path towards the canal and if she could get ahead of the horde, she stood a good chance of living. I glanced over the bridge and waved to Tommy, who brought the boat around.

“We have a survivor and she should be showing up downriver about two hundred yards. I’ll be down in a sec and we can go get her.”

“What about Charlie?” Tommy hollered about the growing din of the undead.

Charlie poked his head over the side. “Right here, dickhead. Go get the girl with John and swing back towards the other side of the bridge, I’ll see you there.”

Tommy waved. “Go swim, loser,” he joked. I just shook rolled my eyes at the two of them, as I climbed over the guardrail and slid down to the banks of the canal. The zombie horde that had chased me was advancing on the road, and Charlie was going to keep them distracted while we picked up the woman. As I jumped aboard the boat, I heard Charlie’s rifle crack as he sent a hot .223 round into the head of a nearby Z.

Tommy moved the boat farther ahead, then cut the power down to keep us relatively motionless in the water as the current gently tried to push us back. I could see the woman still on the roofs, jumping from one to the other and gaining ground on her pursuers. She had about four homes to go before she would have to abandon the houses and make a sprint for the canal. I heard Charlie’s rifle crack again and I saw several ghouls break off their pursuit to head in his direction. Push came to shove, Charlie could jump off the bridge. It was only about a thirty foot drop into twenty-foot deep water, so he would be okay if we could keep him from sinking with all his gear.

Tommy watched the woman closely, trying to time his approach to the bank as she got closer. When she reached the last house, she slipped down to the gutter and hung for a second. Dropping to the ground, she raced past a tangle of children’s toys and jumped the fence that circled the yard. Zombies came pouring through the houses in their attempt to get to her and I took the liberty of shooting two of them that were faster than the others. The woman scrambled to the edge of the canal and leaped on board the boat as soon as it was in range. I directed her to a chair in the front while Tommy spun the wheel and headed to the bridge to pick up Charlie who was standing on the far bank of the canal, his rifle trained on the bridge.

When Charlie was safely aboard, Tommy swung the boat back north and moved away from the hordes of zombies that stared at us helplessly from the shores and bridge. I moved up to where the woman was seated and handed her a bottle of water.

“Welcome aboard. My name is John Talon and these are my friends, Charlie James and Tommy Carter. Who might you be?”

The woman took a long drink of water and then eyed me warily. “I’m Angela Brooks. Thanks for your help. I figured I was done for sure that time.” Angela had dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a homespun face that was handsome rather than pretty. She had smudges of dirt on her face and looked like she hadn’t seen a good meal in days, but she seemed healthy enough. She was wearing a dark blue hoodie and faded jeans. Her backpack looked like it was from a junior high. Her weapon was a Glock 9mm, the handle protruding from a holster on her belt.

I nodded. “Glad to help. God knows there’s few enough of us left these days. Before we get to know each other better, I need you to hand over your weapon.” I held out my left hand, keeping my right hand near my SIG. Charlie shifted his grip on his rifle so it was across his lap, but the muzzle was pointed in Angela’s direction

“Why do you want my gun?” Angela said, her eyes narrowing.

“Honestly? I don’t know you and until I do, I’m not having you armed on this boat. I’ve gone through too much to have everything I’ve fought for lost because I turned my back on someone with a personal agenda. I’ve been shot at by females before and I would rather not repeat the performance. Now please hand over your weapon.”

“And if I refuse?” Angela said, shifting in her chair.

Charlie stood up and held his rifle casually, the muzzle now directly pointed at the woman. The look on his face clearly said he would kill without hesitation if the wrong move was made.

“We put you on the bank of the canal immediately and say our goodbyes and good lucks. If you take a shot at us, we’ll kill you. We’d rather not.” My smile didn’t reach my eyes. I had no patience for this sort of thing.

Angela considered the proposition and with a resigned sigh handed over the weapon. I looked at it, ejected the magazine and shook my head at the two rounds left. I asked if Angela had any more magazines or bullets and she shook her head. I passed the gun to Charlie, who field stripped it at the little table on the boat and started cleaning it.

I sat down across from Angela. “Now, what brings you to that little piece of hell?”

Angela seemed to deflate and leaning back in her chair, told me how she was working downtown as a nutritionist for a health club when the world ended. She and a friend named Dana had managed to escape the city when the Upheaval had started and had stayed in the woods that were across the canal for the last three months. Before that, they had been on the run, hiding where they could, looting what they could find for food and supplies during the winter. She and her friend had hooked up with some other survivors, but their shelter had been overrun, and she and Dana barely escaped with their lives. The rest of the group had been torn apart. I nodded. It was not an unfamiliar scenario.

Angela and her friend had headed south and taken shelter in the woods. The zombies didn’t seem to want to cross the river or the canal, so it seemed like they would have been safe for a while. Then during the winter, her friend got sick and died from pneumonia. Angela buried her friend and resolved to go on when the weather was good enough for travel. She was doing a supply run in the subdivision when the zombies woke up and came after her. That’s when we showed up.

When she finished, I started explaining who we were and where we came from. I told her about Leport and the community we had built there. Her eyes widened when she found out we had nearly four hundred people living there. I told her about the other communities we had contact with and how we were managing to take back what we had lost. Her eyes drifted for a minute and I knew she was reliving some memory from her past. We all did that from time to time.

When I finished, I had a question for her. “If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join the community. We can give you a place to stay, friends to make, and a chance at life. We could use a nutritionist to help with the kids and our limited food supply. Interested?”

Angela’s eyes misted, then she buried her head in her hands and sobbed. I got up and left her to sort things out for herself. I had seen this before from survivors who suddenly found themselves safe, able to relax and not worry that the bump in the night was going to try and eat them.

I sat down by Charlie as he finished putting the Glock back together. “Will she join us?” he asked, casting a glance her way.

“Probably,” I said. “She’s seen a lot and we’ve only scratched the surface of her story, but it will take a while to come out. I’m just stunned anyone is alive out here.”

Charlie nodded and handed the Glock back to me as well as a fully loaded magazine. I took both and headed back to the front. Angela seemed to have composed herself and looked up at me with red eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been that emotional for a while. I guess the shock of suddenly being offered a chance to live after nearly dying for so long catches up to you.”

I waved it off. “Happened to a lot more people than you think.” I handed her weapon back and the full magazine. “Charlie cleaned it and loaded the magazine for you. You’re good to go.”

“You’re trusting me with my gun? What if I shoot you and try to take this boat?” Angela asked, inserting the magazine and chambering a round before returning it to its holster.