The Dark Trinity (Book 1): Shuffle (26 page)

CHAPTER 33 
  REUNION

A half-mile away from the river banks where Boomer had come
ashore, Nathan and Ronnie continued northwest along the river. The buildings
were now more abundant, allowing the pair to weave through alleyways, keeping
themselves hidden from any searching eyes.

Nathan’s body began to twang with the familiar pain of the
Hunger as they travelled. The rats and pigeons that he had been eating up until
this point only dulled the waves of distress the Hunger had been subjecting his
body to. He knew that he wasn’t eating nearly enough meat and he had a theory
that until he finally consumed human flesh, the pangs would continue to plague
him. He wouldn’t allow himself to succumb to the temptation, of course.

It was horrible enough that Evelyn would have to behold the
monster that he had become; he wasn’t about to lose the last remnants of his
humanity. Nathan wasn’t delusional though. He knew that the moment she gazed
upon his gnarled, deformed body, she would no doubt scream, cry, and then blow
his face off with whatever gun she managed to find nearby.

As he and Ronnie continued to weave through the buildings
along Route 51, thoughts of a cure for the infection danced in his head.
Don’t
be an idiot, there’s no way to reverse this shit,
he thought. Foolish hope
and misplaced dreams were all that those ideas would ever amount to. Nathan’s
logic then shifted to more practical reasoning. Perhaps if he consumed larger animals
instead of rats and pigeons, he’d be able to prolong the relief from that
tortuous hunger pain. Maybe a cat or a dog...No. Not a dog. Visions of Boomer
flashed in his head. Monster or not, he knew that he couldn’t bring himself to
harm a dog. A cat? Even that would be a stretch. Groundhog? Raccoon? Yeah, he
could handle that.

A sharp crack of a stick caused the pair to freeze. Nathan
looked at Ronnie, who gazed back at him with the same quizzical look. They were
standing behind a group of row houses that sat about ten feet in front of a
long stretch of woods.

CRACK!

He snapped his head towards the wall of trees and shrubs. The
second sound was louder than the first, heralding the near arrival of what, a
zombie? A soldier gone AWOL in an attempt at survival?

An ominous thought oozed into the back of Nathan’s
consciousness.
What if it was the unknown monster from the subway tunnel?
If his skin was capable of crawling, it would have been at that moment. The
encounter in the tunnel had terrified him. The glimpse of the creature emerging
from the shadows as he hurled himself off of the bridge had emblazoned a
horrific dread upon his psyche. Now the foliage before them shook from the
approaching unknown and the fear from the bridge returned with renewed fervor.

“Dude, whatta ya wanna do?” Ronnie asked in a gurgled
whisper; the nervousness in his voice obvious.

“Wait,” was all he said as he held up his hand to silence his
friend. Ronnie obliged and stood rigid, focused on the rustling brush that was
drawing closer.

The two young zombies stood motionless as they steeled
themselves for what was about to happen. Neither twitched a muscle. Neither
made a sound. Seconds stretched out into eons as the movement in the woods drew
near. One hundred feet. Fifty feet. The pair moved in unison into a defensive
stance. The underbrush, a mere ten feet away from them, quivered and shook.
This was it.

From the shadows of the forest sprang a dog no more than
sixty pounds. Its fur was wet and matted with blood, mud, and leaves. Upon
seeing the zombies in the clearing, the little dog began growling, but then
stopped, cocking its head inquisitively. Nathan looked at Ronnie who shrugged.
Looking back at the ragged looking canine, Nathan inspected the mutt.

“Holy shit, it can’t be. Can it?” he said under his breath.
“Boomer? Boo is that you?” he asked

Boomer's tail wagged emphatically as he performed the most
ridiculous happy dance ever seen by human, or zombie eyes. Whimpering and
grunting out of sheer joy, Boomer bounded towards Nathan and the two embraced.
Master had changed into one of the dead things, but he was different from the
rest that he had encountered on his journey. It didn’t matter that he had
changed, he was still his human and he had found him. He had finally found his master.

CHAPTER 34 
  WAITING

Sam peered through the narrow slit in the blinds. The
moonlight shimmered over the countless alabaster faces which surrounded the
building. He heard the collective hiss of the dead as they stood there staring
back at him. He knew that they knew he was watching. What he didn’t know was
why they weren’t attacking. They just stood there. Watching. Waiting.
Waiting
for what?

Behind him, the clicking and clacking of firearms resounded
as the others prepared to make their stand. Even Rachel Cowan, the snobby
socialite, armed herself with a snub-nosed pistol. Sam was happy that his
brother was a conspiracy nut. Byron had made a safe room under the shop and
stocked it for World War III. Too bad he hadn't lived through the cancer; he
would have been ecstatic that his doomsday prepping wasn't in vain. A somber,
heavy silence weighed on the small band of survivors. They all knew that time
was running out. They all knew that soon, they would be dead.

Carlos meandered down the long aisle towards the front door
and stopped just behind Sam. “Excuse me, Mr. Lusce,” Carlos whispered, “but it
would seem as though we are completely surrounded by those...things. They’re at
the back door.”

Sam dropped the blind and turned to face Carlos, who grew
anxious being so close to a glass door with an army of bloodthirsty monsters on
the other side. Holding his gaze for a moment, Sam turned and walked towards
the rear door.

He could hear them before he even got to the cash register.
The unmistakable hiss droned beyond the thick steel door. Another noise sounded
over the monotonous tone of the dead; the rapping of claws on the cinder block
walls. Every few moments, one of the deadly talons screamed across the metal
door like nails on a chalkboard.

His eyes moved from the door to the ladder that led up to the
roof. He couldn’t detect any noise from there, but he would bet that the dead
had made their way up top as well. He focused his attention to the door
opposite the ladder, which led to the small office he used to get away from the
antics of Bill and Pete. They had locked Ethan inside once they were positive
he had been infected.

Alison had insisted that he stay alive, citing all the usual
doctor ideals that many new med students tend to be fanatical about. Shawn was
about to impale Ethan’s head with a crossbow bolt, when Alison intervened,
using herself as a shield to protect the soon-to-be-zombified Ethan. Theresa sided
with Alison, pleading to spare the young man from what many in the room felt
was the humane thing to do. The group conceded to the women’s pleas and spared
him, but they felt it prudent to isolate him from the rest of the group.

Sam stared hard at the door, attempting to hear any noise
from the small office, but it was impossible with the swarm right there in the
back alley. He moved closer, placing his ear against the door. Nothing. As far
as he could tell, Ethan either passed out or was dead. After another minute,
Sam turned from the door and made his way back out into the showroom.

Chatty had taken up position at the front door, staring at
the dire situation outside. He stood rigid, still, and unflinching. Daniel and
Shawn made their way to the front door and stood next to the hulking titan of a
man, attempting to get a better look at their enemy. Theresa, Allison, Rachel,
and Evelyn stood along the counter. Evelyn was showing the other women how to
use their weaponry. Sam was impressed with how well she knew her way around a
firearm. His former neighbor wrote several spy thrillers and while researching
one of her books, she spent a lot of time at the gun range, learning about a
whole slew of various weaponry.

“So how many do you think are out there?” Carlos asked,
startling Sam out of his thoughts.

“Shit son, don’t scare me like that!” he yelled in a whisper.
“If I had to guess, I’d say thousands. Then again, I was never much of an
optimist.”

He could see Carlos’s face go green at the mental image his
estimate had evoked. He let out a chuckle. “I’ve been known to be wrong from
time to time.”

Carlos managed a weak and unconvincing smile before he
hurried back to the front door with the other men. Sam followed close behind,
hoping as much as Carlos that his guess was wrong. A moment later, the men
stood together in silence, the collective pounding of their hearts matched the
drone of the terror outside.

****************

A flash blinded the undead girl, stopping her in her tracks.
The Horde halted behind her; those in the front ranks desperately trying to
avoid trampling their little leader, for fear of the consequences. They might
not think too much, but they know enough not to cross their Queen.

The vivid image lingered in Sunshine’s vision as the bright
flash in her mind began to subside. A face floated before her. A woman, quite
beautiful, despite the blood and grime which gilded her face. An expression of
hate, loathing, and disgust is worn by the stranger. A moment later, the image
dissolved.

Sunshine knew what she saw; the last few moments from one of
her children.
Who was this woman?
she wondered. There was a familiarity
about her that she couldn’t figure out. Sure that she had seen her before, the
zombie queen strained and visualized the countless faces that she saw, both
from her children’s eyes and her own.

Seconds turned into minutes as she stood catatonic, focusing
herself inward as she searched for the answer. “There,” she whispered. A large
grin spread over Sunshine’s face. That’s where she knew the face from. While
she attempted to probe the man’s mind, she caught a glimpse of the same woman
for just an instant. The feeling that the man, this Nathan, associated with the
woman was—love.

“The game has changed, Nathan,” she said to herself. “You
will not elude me again.” Continuing forward, Sunshine reached out her thoughts
to her hell spawn already at the woman’s location and ordered them to await her
arrival.

****************

“So any of you cowboys got any bright ideas?” Shawn asked
with his usual abrasiveness. He peered at the growing brood of enemies outside.

“What are they doing?” asked Daniel, approaching the front
door with Sam and Evelyn close behind.

“Nothing. That’s the problem,” replied Shawn.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“They’re just standing there. They’re not attacking. They’re
not advancing; hell, they aren’t even strategizing. If anything, they’re
backing off. That worries me. It’s almost like they’re behaving as a unit; as
if they were taking orders...” Shawn trailed off as his mind finished piecing
together the implications of his thought.

Evelyn contemplated Shawn's observations. If the infected
were more than mindless predators, if they organized themselves, then they were
royally screwed. They would be seriously outmatched. “So let’s assume for the
moment that these things can think for themselves. How do we outsmart them?”
she asked.

“I don’t know if we can,” replied Shawn. “We don’t even know
what their motivation is. Nor do we know their endgame.”

“Look at that,” she said as she gazed out the front door.

“They’re retreating?” Daniel asked.

“No. My bet is that they’re getting into a defensive
position. Staying close so they can keep an eye on us, but moving far enough
away to make any offensive we might be able to mount completely useless,” Shawn
observed.

Sam cleared the tension from his throat. “I think Shawn here
is right. They’re hunkering down for a good ‘ol fashioned siege.”

“What, like in medieval times? They’re just gonna sit out
there and wait for us to die of starvation?” Daniel asked, a little skeptical.

“No,” Evelyn answered. “They’re holding us prisoner.”

Sam threw an inquisitive look at the young writer through
narrow eyes. “How do you figure that?”

Without glancing away from the window, she explained herself
to the men behind her, as well as the other curious survivors who crept towards
the front door to listen.

“Think about it, there must be thousands of them out there
and we can safely assume that those numbers are climbing. If they really wanted
to get in here, their sheer numbers alone would make this little stronghold of
ours look like a lemonade stand built by six year olds. No, their plan isn’t to
wait us out, they’re keeping us here until something, or someone, arrives.”

The words sent chills down the spine of every person within
earshot of her, including Shawn. As each one of them processed the situation in
their heads, they could visualize a tsunami of undead bodies rolling towards
the store, razing it to the ground. They all knew that she was right.

“She’s right,” Sam uttered in a commanding voice. “So what we
need to do is come up with a strategy to get us the hell out of here.”

Sam looked around at the crowd gathered around him. By now
all the survivors huddled by the front door, standing in a stunned realization.
“Any ideas? Anyone?”

A long silence extended well beyond uncomfortable and a good
way into unbearable. Finally, Evelyn turned to the group. “I have a plan.”