Wake the Dead 2 (Wake The Dead Series) (7 page)

Chapter 6

The group was halfway through the tree line, at the corner of the side and back of the hospital, when a sound came from behind Alex. He spun to see a zombie charging straight for Alexis and did not have time to nock an arrow. He instead removed his Glock, quickly flipped the safety and shot the thing in the head. It fell to the side, landing in a pile of twigs and leaves.

The silencer did the job as nothing else stirred or came for them. Alexis was covered in gore, as the creature was a foot from her when Alex shot it.

Alexis, still in shock, took in a few rounds of deep breaths before she turned to regard Alex. She made to move toward him, to possibly say something to him, but before she could make it to him, Alex saw Selina toss that same towel at her, catching her in the face.

“Might wanna clean that blood and gore off your face, hon,” she said sharply.

Alex shrugged, rolled his eyes, and shook his head in disbelief at the cattiness. It took everything he had to stifle a chuckle at the exchange. Bryan hadn’t even seen what had happened, as he was many paces ahead of them, creeping quietly through the thickets. He suddenly appeared before them now after hearing the shot and stood in front of Alexis.

“What the hell happened?!” Bryan asked, looking from Alex to Selina and then back to Alexis, inspecting her and watching her clean her face with a towel.

“It’s all good. Your girlfriend’s fine,” Selina said harshly.

“Are you okay?” Bryan asked Alexis concernedly, his hands on her shoulders while Alexis wiped her face repeatedly with that same towel. She continued to flip over and fold it in the hopes of finding a clean spot it seemed to Alex, but she did not fare so well.

“Where were you?!” she whispered to him a little too loudly. Selina strode right over to Alex and pulled him away from the discussion.

“What the hell? We don’t have time for—“

“It’s a woman thing. Let it go, Lancelot, she’ll be done in a minute,” Selina said with a silly grin as she jammed her sword into the ground and crouched, using it for balance. Alex watched as Bryan reached into his own pack and removed a plastic hard-shell case and handed something to Alexis.

The pair waited a few moments until Bryan and Alexis finished their discussion. Eventually, a gloomy Bryan joined Selina and Alex, leaving Alexis alone. It appeared to Alex as if she was possibly sulking, but he couldn’t really tell for sure. She had something in her hand that he couldn’t really make out.

“Everything all right with you two?” Selina asked, making it to her feet again and yanking her sword free.

“Yep. All good.”

“Can she handle that weapon?” Alex asked, recognizing that what Alexis held in her hand was a pistol.

“Yeah, it’s a Beretta I had tucked away. Just want her to be safe,” Bryan said, staring up at Alex, who stared back worriedly.

“Don’t worry, I showed her the safety…and its factory with a suppressor; I never fired the damn thing. Found it a while back still in the case in the back of an abandoned vehicle. Never used it and don’t worry, it won’t make any noise,” he added as he slapped Alex on the shoulder and winked.

“I generally don’t think it’s a great idea to give someone a deadly weapon, especially if they haven’t even been trained with one yet,” Alex countered.

“Man, she said she’s fired one before at a range back in the day. Besides, we’re not exactly in a situation where we can train her properly, are we?”

“
Back in the day?”
Alex echoed incredulously.

“C’mon, man. I don’t have the ammo for her to go practice, nor do any of us have the time to show her everything right now! This ain’t exactly the perfect scenario, I know. But—“

“I get it. It’s not an ideal situation. Just sayin’, I don’t like it. She’s gonna get herself hurt or worse. I can just see it coming.”

“Duly noted, I’ll let the record stand that you disapprove.”

“Wonderful,” Alex said, his words dripping with sarcasm as he tossed his arms in the air resignedly. Selina remained silent the whole time, either not having an opinion, or not wanting to get involved with the argument.

“Guys, I can hear you,” Alexis said, cocking her head to the side and non-too pleased at the discussion that was taking place. “I’ve handled a gun before.”

Selina whispered something under her breath and then looked away, rolling her eyes. Alex let that go and stared at Bryan and then Alexis. “Fair enough. Like you said, we can’t stand around here arguing all day. We’ve got a job to do.”

“Great, then we’re in agreement.” Bryan stared at Alex for a long minute, though Alex said nothing more. “Well, even more interestingly, I have something else to show you guys,” he said, waving them to follow him along the tree line again. As they made their way around the back of the building, Bryan stopped and pointed to something in the distance. “There, along the far fence. It’s close to the exit.”

Alex held the binoculars to his eyes and grinned. “An ambulance.”

“Yeah, an
ambulance
,” Bryan repeated, smiling and lighting up one of his last cigarettes. “There’s gotta be everything we need in that thing!”

“Assuming nothing was taken already,” Selina suggested.

“C’mon, man! Look at that parking lot. Nothing was taken from
anywhere
inside that fuckin’ place.”

“I think I'm in agreement with that,” Alex said, looking back to a shrugging Selina who nodded.

“Probably right,” she admitted, before looking curiously to Bryan “But how we gonna get it?”

“Okay, hear me out,” he began explaining as everyone moved in to listen.

***

“Alex thought the plan was not bad as he and Selina waited in the brush. Bryan and Alexis stood from their circle, everyone in agreement and began to make their way south again toward the road.

“Bryan,” Alex called to him softly, stopping him in his tracks. He turned back and looked questioningly at Alex. “You’re gonna need these,” he said, dangling and shaking the keys in his hand and smiling at the fuzzy-haired man who came back to him.

“Thanks, jack-ass,” Bryan teased.

As Bryan got up to rejoin Alexis, they heard a gun go off again. They collectively regarded Alexis, her own pistol out in front of her pointed toward the brush, and they all raced to her side to join her.

Lying on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was a buck. It was dying, but not dead. In its death thralls, its head was jerking back and forth.

“Goddammit,” Alex said under his breath. He strode purposefully over to Alexis, grabbed the gun from her shaking hand and benevolently placed a slug in the dying animal’s brain. It ceased moving immediately. Wordlessly, he strode right back over to her and handed her the gun back, then rejoined Selina.

“I…I’m so sorry!” Alexis said in a tizzy. “I didn’t mean to—“

“Hey, shit happens,” Bryan said, trying to comfort the woman.

“I thought it was one of
them
again,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks, making clean streaks down her soiled cheeks.

“I understand,” he said, hugging her tightly and looking back toward them. Alex shrugged and gestured for him to take his time, using open palms held out before him and nodding. Bryan recognized the gesture and allowed her to weep uncontrollably for a few minutes before holding her out at arm’s length for inspection.

“Hey, we have a job to do, so are you okay? You ready?” he asked her. She nodded and the two of them walked off, Bryan looking back at Alex briefly over his shoulder before heading off.

“Shit, I hope they don’t fuck this up,” Alex said.

“C’mon, man. You never made a mistake?” Selina asked him in an analyzing tone.

“Of course I have. We all have. I'm not judging her, just hoping that she can work through it. An’ quick, ya know,” he said, holding her scrutinizing gaze for a moment until she softened, then smirked and nodded at him. “Our whole plan
depends
on it!”

“They’ll be fine. C’mon, they did it before once. Don’t you have faith?”

“I do,” Alex lied, thinking that in this very moment, he did not trust that they would execute the plan well as he stared after them, watching them disappear around the corner.

The next five minutes were excruciating, as Alex and Selina exited the tree line and fell to their hands and knees, crawling ever so slowly toward the back gate. Inside that gate was the ambulance they desperately needed. Or rather, they were willing to risk life and limb in the
hopes
that it would have the supplies they needed.

Alex was not very concerned about the keys not being in it—
IF
—they were able to make it to the vehicle without dying. Ambulances had the keys in them most of the time as the EMT’s were usually in a hurry. The real question was,
is there a zombie inside the vehicle?

“There’s a pretty good chance that someone is inside that rig,” Alex said aloud what he was thinking. “Or some-
thing
, rather.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Selina said, crawling up beside him. They were not far from the fence now and Alex could see a gate with a chain wrapped around it. The chain link was pretty solid and the top had a few strands of barbed wire to keep the public from thinking twice before trying to cross the boundary.

“You have bolt-cutters?” Selina asked.

“I’ve got tin snips. I found them, as a matter of fact, when I was trying to save your ass!” Alex said with a chuckle. “No bolt-cutters yet. We’re gonna pick up a pair on our next trip to SuperMart though. You can bet on that.”

“You gonna cut our way in?” Selina asked him doubtfully.

“”Yep. That’s the plan. Unless there’s no lock on that chain,” he added, staring over there through the binoculars and not seeing anything. “Must have been fastened from the inside.”

“Or, they never locked it. The jokers ain’t smart, so they can’t open doors or use mechanical things,” Selina said with hope.

“Well, that’s true. We’ll find out soon enough, huh?”

Selina nodded and gestured for him to hand her the binoculars. As if on cue, they heard the sound of a vehicle heading their way. Alex chanced a look and lifted his head to see. It was the Explorer heading their way and right toward the fence.

The zombies that were inside the gates became immediately incensed at the activity and sound, rushing toward the gates to investigate.

Bryan waved to them from the passenger window, Alexis in the driver’s seat—both literally and figuratively where Bryan was concerned, Alex suddenly thought—and then he began whistling for the zombies on the back side of the property. They drove right up to the locked gate and began blaring the horn.

As the vehicular game of ‘pied piper’ ensued—the term the group had been using to describe the luring of zombies away from others—the vehicle slowly crept along the fencing heading toward the front of the lot. As they continued along, the noise brought a heavy portion of the undead horde with it, leaving behind almost no stragglers.

Alex could not help but notice the chain link begin to buckle under the sheer mass of undead flesh that pushed against it. The SUV picked up speed and decoyed the horde further away from where Alex and Selina patiently waited.

The two of them raced toward the entrance and, sure enough, it was locked from the inside. Without a word, Alex began working the tin snips along a straight line, cutting as quickly as he could.

As he was cutting, he felt a presence behind him and immediately after, heard a gurgling noise and then felt he fence bulge right in front him. He rolled backward as his heart thundered in his chest, thinking something was about to kill him. He glanced up from where he lay on the ground and realized that Selina must have jammed her sword through a zombie that had come toward them, and it had fallen over dead right where he was cutting.

A few seconds later, he caught his breath and resumed his task. When the cutting was finished, Alex tossed the snips in his pack and removed the bow, shouldered his quiver, and then removed an arrow. He nocked one as they rounded the corner.

He felt more than saw the movement and jumped out from around the corner of the ambulance and saw another of the undead sniffing the air as if acknowledging their presence. He loosed the arrow and it pierced the zombie’s skull.

Racing to the body, Alex yanked free the arrow and inspected it. The shaft was cracked.