The Reanimates (Book 3): The Escape (24 page)

We fell asleep to the sounds of the dead wandering aimlessly outside. None of us slept well. We all kept waiting for the dead to find us, but they never did.

When the morning came, we packed up to reach the ship. We made it all the way to New York, and today was ship out day. All we needed to do was make it one more mile. It's always the last mile that was the hardest, and we knew that we still had a long way to go.

We had company. The dead that we heard outside during the night didn't go away when the sun came up. We made a lot of racket rolling up the door and that caught their attention. We were careful as we left, and traveled in a tight group. We followed the signs carefully and kept up the pace. We were painfully aware of the fact that we were surrounded and were running out of options.

There was a warehouse in front of us and we saw that there were windows on the second story of the building that had a makeshift bridge from them to the building that was next to it. If we took the roofs, we could make it that last block we needed to get to the docks.

It seemed like the zombies were linked in with our plan, and they were bearing down on us. We didn't have a lot of time to reach the building before we were cut off. Jackson and Justin both grabbed a hold of Abigail so they could help her move faster. Liam and Raine grabbed hands as well, and we all took off running. We fired at the zombies that were getting close. We finally were near to the door, and of course, it was locked.

Matt fired his gun at the locks and Trent threw himself at the door to break it open, and it finally swung free. Lucas and Matt were helping push people inside as the dead closed in on the group. We pushed everyone in, but since we had to break the door open, there was no way to secure it once we were through. Matt leaned against it, struggling to keep it shut, and his sons ran to him to help him block the entry. Lucas and Lacey ran to see how to get to the windows, while Trent and I made a lap around the warehouse to make sure we were alone. We caught a break there; the only company in the building was rats. We stripped our jackets off in response to the heat of the enclosed space and tied the sleeves on our backpacks so they were handy later when we were near the docks.

Lacey and Lucas found a metal staircase that lead to a loft where the windows were. They yelled out that they found it and we all ran up the stairs. Matt hollered to his boys to get up to the loft, and that he would join them in just a second. They argued for a second, the boys weren't keen on the idea of leaving their dad alone, but finally they took off and ran up the metal stairs. The window was a little taller than we had figured, and it led to a ledge where the bridge made with several 2×4s was resting. Lucas hoisted himself up through the window first and went across the boards to make sure it was safe, and we started pushing people out as soon as he made it across safely.

The only reason the zombies didn't make their way into the building earlier was that there were three men holding it shut. Now that Justin and Jackson were making their way up the stairs, there wasn't enough strength to stop the hungry dead from entering. Matt was fighting to keep the door as shut as possible, but he was losing his battle.

Jackson yelled out that he was coming back and Matt screamed at him. "Don't you dare, young man! Your mother would kill me if I put you in danger, so for her, you better get up those stairs right now and honor her memory by helping get the rest of the group out!"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the door swung open. The zombies were on Matt in an instant and they started to tear into him. Trent, Drew, and I were firing on the zombies, and I aimed to take Matt out of his misery. We yelled at the twins to climb out of the window and help the girls. They stumbled out, and followed directions, through gasping tears. Justin was pausing every now and then to fire on the zombies that were piling through the opening and up the stairs to where we were, until Trent yelled at him.

We were nearly out of bullets and we had to go. The entire loft swayed with the zombies as they shambled up the stairs. They stumbled, but made it up to where we were, and they were headed for us. We were almost out. It was just Trent, Drew, and I left on the loft. Trent and I grabbed Drew and we pushed him up to the window to help him out.

Drew was just about through when an intense, crushing pain started in my calf. The cramping pain nearly made me fall over and when I looked down at the source of the pain, I found a hungry mouth round the muscle. There was a mini zombie attached to me, a young boy who still retained the appearance of being Asian. Part of me wanted to believe that this was a feral child and not a zombie. He had only a slight wound on his hand, one that was small enough to have been caused by an animal, but another look into his face with the tight dead skin and those clouded dead eyes, ripped any hope that I was going to be okay. I was bit by a mini zombie who couldn't be more than ten-years-old and wore a dirty shirt that said I love The Yankees. My eyes grew wide with horror, and I stifled the panicked scream that wanted to fly out of my mouth. I was going to help Trent up, and not scare the crap out of my kid before I died. I looked up at Trent, hoping that he hadn't seen what just happened quite yet, but he had. He fired at the zombie attached to me and it let go. Trent reached for me to see if I was okay.

"You're wearing jeans. Maybe the teeth didn't break your skin." His voice was a half prayer, half hope, but it wasn't going to help. My skin had been broken; I could feel the blood running down my leg. My face said that it was a lost cause, but he still had to look.

The other zombies had reached the platform. I fired at the closest ones. I looked behind Trent and watched as a zombie tripped over the corpse that I had just shot, tumbling next to Trent, putting it right at prime biting height. Before I could line up the shot, it bared its teeth and leaned in for the bite, right into Trent's left arm. I fired at it, with a deafening crack, taking it down. It was too little, too late, and my slowness just cost my husband his life.

My husband and I were both bit. We were both going to die. The thought was like a deeply seated splinter in my heart; it hurt and stabbed further with every beat. Drew was going to be an orphan.

"Check your gun, Trent." I whispered. I found that my own was down to its last, and Trent had only two left himself. "I love you, baby." Tears were streaming down my face. I clutched my arms around his neck, and held onto him as though we were drowning and he was my lifesaver. I felt the platform shake and thud again with the sounds of uncoordinated feet as they pounded up the wobbly metal stairs. I looked over to the stairs and confirmed that we didn't have much longer until there were more coming up; more than we had bullets to manage.

"At least we got Drew out, right?" Trent murmured in my ear.

"We did. Trent, baby, I don't want to be torn apart by those things, and I don't want you to be either. We can't join the others, because we will kill them, or they'll have the burden of having to kill us, and that will be done in front of Drew, and I don't want him to see that. We don't have enough bullets to fight off the ones coming to let nature run its course." Tears were streaming down my face. I looked at the gun next to me. "We have enough bullets in our guns for one thing. I promised you, and you promised me that we wouldn't let the other turn. It's time for us to keep that promise. Together."

"We'll have to count to three, and there can't be any backing out." Trent replied.

"No backing out."

I lifted my gun to my husband's temple, as he did the same to mine. I forced a smile as I looked into my husband, my best friend's eyes one more time.

They say that your life flashes before your eyes as you die, and I found that it really did. My final mental movie of my life was full of joy. Flashes of Drew's birth, my wedding, camping with my family, graduating nursing school, all of the moments of joy I had were front and center. There was no sadness in my movie, and I had a life well-lived and well-loved swirling in my head. All those pieces gave me strength. Heaven couldn't be much different than these swirls in my head.

I wanted to go out in a hug. I buried my face in his neck. We repositioned our guns so now the barrels were aimed at the back of each other’s heads.

"Okay, I think I'm as ready as I can be. I love you, Trent. One," I said, with a half-smile as I thought of Drew and Trent fishing together.

"I love you, too. Two," he replied. I hoped that he was getting an instant replay of his greatest hits, too. I hoped that he was getting a moment of comfort in the middle of all this fear and chaos.

"See you soon." My eyes were filled with tears as I tightened my arms around my husband for the last time in this life.

And together, we said, "Three."

The last thing I heard was the sharp cracks of the fired weapons, then the room went instantly black.

Drew

"What's taking them so long?" I asked with an annoyed sigh. I was mostly annoyed that my mom and dad were hanging back when they knew we were waiting on them. "They should have been through that window by now."

I checked my watch for about the tenth time, and finally went up to Lucas. "Dude, I'm gonna find out what the hold-up is. This is silly."

Lucas tried to tell me to stay put, but I wasn't having it. I was going to get my mom and dad. Didn't they realize we had a boat to catch? Lucas caught my arm but I spun out of it. "If they were your fam..." I was interrupted by the sounds of two guns being fired at the same time. One was definitely my mom's .22, and the other was my dad's .45. They never fired at the same time before.

"Mom!" I screamed, "Mom! Dad! Say something! Please say something so I know you're okay!" All I heard was the sound of the moans of the zombies. "Please guys, please say something."

They didn't say anything. They didn't say anything at all. My parents wouldn't ignore me. Why weren't they saying anything? Why weren't they answering me?

"Guys!"

Abigail stepped in front of me. "Drew, we gotta go."

"What if they're just hurt?" I asked.

Lucas said from behind me, "You know they'd answer if they were alive. Come on, son, we have to move."

Moving on felt like a huge betrayal. I didn't want to leave my parents in some warehouse. I didn't want to leave them. It was strange how small I felt all of a sudden. I was a man, but my heart felt like it belonged to a kindergartener, just dropped off for school, and not certain they would ever see their mom again. I wasn't certain either.

Lacey, with her arms around Jackson and Justin, who were moving in slow motion now that their dad was dead, said, "I know. None of you want to move, but we honor their sacrifice. They made sure their kids were safe, and we honor that."

I heard the blaring ship horn, so I turned and looked out to the window one last time, hoping to see them, but they weren't there. Lacey and Abigail were right, and I knew that we had to go, but I didn't want to move. I felt like I was wearing cement shoes while an elephant sat on my chest. I knew they were right, we did have to go, but it just sucked. I sucked in a deep breath around the elephant, and pushed it out.

"Yeah." I said, "Let's move."

Acknowledgments

• Del
  -- Thank you for listening to me go on and on about the directions that Cali and the group were going. Your patience while I would check out on the real world while I bumbled around this zombie world is amazing, and I'm very grateful to you.
  
• Connor--
  Thank you so much for being the most awesome kid ever. You are the best.
  
• Sarah--
  My editing guru. Thank you for putting up with my crazy commas and haphazard hyphens, and thank you for being my friend even after I made you crazy.
  
• Danielle--
  Thank you for sticking with me since the beginning. You helped get these people from that small apartment complex in Southern California to Montana.
  
• Stephanie--
  Thank you for being my beta reader and all your help in getting the word out about this series.
  
• Anne--
  Thank you for being so supportive of this whole project. You've kept me inspired with your love of books and that love for a good story has been infectious.
  

• And super important....
  Thank
  you
  to
  all
  of
  the
  readers
  . You all kept me going with your excitement over the series. You rock!!!