Z-Risen (Book 3): Poisoned Earth (15 page)

Our vehicle had enough blood and guts covering the hood and sides to make a horror movie fan stand up and shout for glee.

The yard was half-finished, and Joel had no choice but to drive over a couple of deep holes that had probably been dug for more trees. I got a glimpse of a Z rising out of one of the pits like a fresh-raised dead. The truck smacked him down and then bounced into the air. Anna hung onto me, and I held onto the hatch.

We were going to make it.

“Ow!” Christy called from inside.

“We see the road, Christy. Hang on.”

What I’d taken for a low line of shrubs or trees turned out to have a different idea. As the truck bumped over the yard, the high beams told the tale: the road was indeed free, but Zs were closing in from every direction. Even this big-ass rig wouldn’t be able to make it through that mess.

“I’ll get us as far as I can,” Joel called from inside the truck.

It was a great plan. Sadly, we didn’t get very far.

I held on as Joel hit a fucking
wall
of zombies. Some were smashed aside, some were crushed underneath, and some exploded. Walking corpses, so I’d learned, tended to do that. Blood, guts, splattered brains, and body parts covered the front of the big truck, and with each impact, the body sustained more and more damage. There had to be a hundred of the things all around us, and instead of getting away from them, we came to a halt.

The truck died, and with it, the sound of the dead became the only thing I heard, until Anna took out a feisty, freshly-dead fuck who’d decided that he wanted to climb up the hood.

The engine turned over, caught with a weird noise that sounded like chains cracking together and then died again. Joel cranked a few more times, but the only answer was a grinding noise.

“Ah, shit!” he said.

I pushed myself up and shimmied through the little portal. My sides and arms felt like I’d been in a damn boxing ring with all of the scrapes and bruises.

Anna made room for me, but the roof bowed dangerously as we moved around.

Joel turned the key again and let it crank for a good ten seconds, but nothing happened, except the truck groaned like it had given up.
That’s right, fuck you people who abused the shit out of me. I can only take so much.

The dead closed in all around us.

“What do we do now?” Anna looked me in the eye and I saw something that I had rarely seen from her.

She was just as scared as me.

#28 - Uncertainty

05:20 hours approximate

Location: Just outside of Oceanside

Gunfire shattered the night.

The moans of the dead were the only noise that filled my ears. They also filled my soul with dread, because as many scrapes as we’d been in, this was the motherfucker that topped them all. Not for the first time we were completely surrounded, but this time I didn’t have a plan, and judging by the defeated look on Joel’s face, neither did he.

I’d been staring at the mass as they surrounded us, and my thoughts had turned to how we were all going to off each other. Would one of us shoot the rest? Would we sit around in a circle jerk and watch each other blow their brains out? Maybe we could just have Joel machine gun us into oblivion, and then he could do himself.

The funny thing was that I worried about my body after we were dead, so I had been looking around for things to set the camper on fire with.

Then my mind raced as I thought about zombies eating our toasted bodies. Would they bring some Kansas City BBQ sauce to enjoy our ribs?

Joel managed to get out of the truck’s window without being pulled into the mess of Zs. Anna and I had provided cover while he shimmied up the side and onto the roof, kicking away grasping hands in the process.

There’d been one real moment where I thought he was being dumb. Joel had grabbed a couple of boxes of ammo and flung them at us, then he’d ducked in for more after batting aside a couple of grabby assholes. What was the use of all that ammo when we were completely stuck? It would take a thousand rounds to get out of this mess.

The basis of a plan formed in my head. We’d take turns sitting on the camper shooting all of these bastards until we were out of bullets. If that happened, we’d have a chance.

Or until a couple of shufflers appeared.

The three of us shimmied into the camper.

“This ain’t good,” Joel said. “And what the hell is that fucking smell?”

“Roz got sick after we got her in here. Not like we can open a window and air the place out,” I said. “We’ve been in worse spots than this, Joel.”

“Nah, man. This is the worst. Thing is, the truck is stuck. I don’t know if I got too much zombie shit in the grill or if we just hit a Z wall. All I know is I couldn’t move forward or back. Engine died and I couldn’t get it to restart.”

“Wait it out,” Anna said.

“I saw at least three shufflers out there. Glowing green eyes and everything. I can try to take them out, but hitting moving targets isn’t as easy as it looks, and we got limited ammo,” Joel said.

“So much for my plan,” I muttered.

“What was it?” Joel asked.

“It was stupid. Next plan?”

“We don’t have a choice. We have to wait it out, and maybe we can keep them out of the camper long enough so that they lose interest and wander away. All we have to do is shoot the shufflers,” Anna said.

“Works for me,” I nodded. “Put Joel and his assault rifle up there and he can pick off the fast ones.”

“Good plan, but I’m almost out of rounds.”

Joel moved to Roz’s side and brushed the hair out of her face. His fist clenched when he saw the damage.

“She needs help,” I muttered.

Hands pounded at the back door.

“I tried to clean up the wound, but there’s a lot of blood and I didn’t want to hurt her,” Christy said.

“How could you let this happen?” Joel said.

I shook my head. What the
hell
? We didn’t
let
anything happen; a shuffler had dropped on us and taken us by surprise. Anna had been the one to get the bastard off Roz while I fought my way back to them.

“It was so fast, Joel, you were there. Oh, wait, you went upstairs to kill stuff, remember, that’s what you do.”

“Fuck you, man. I saved your ass and you let her get attacked.”

“Don’t blame me. Coulda happened to any of us,” I tried to reason.

“But it didn’t, it happened to her.”

Christy sat on the floor next to Roz and held a bloodied towel. Tears left a clean line through grime as they trickled down her face.

“Stop arguing,” she said.

“We aren’t arguing, because I’m right,” Joel said.

He looked around the tiny cabin and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before: despair. He was at the end of his rope, and I wasn’t going to be much help, because I felt the same way.

More hands beat at the trailer. The truck actually tilted
as too many of them pushed.

“Joel, we can’t argue about this right now. We need to deal with that,” I nodded at the door.

Joel pointed at Roz. “
That
is a
real
problem.
That
is what we need to fix. Tired of watching your ass all the time.”

The side of the cabin bowed in and the trailer lifted a half foot off the ground. I reached for the sink and caught myself.

“Calm down, man. You’re just upset.”

“I’m not going to be calm until we’re out of this. We gotta get some help for Roz. Get back to the city and see if that crazy
bitch with the meds has something that can fix her up.”

“Dude, you sound like a crazy person,” I said.

“Fuck you, Creed. The only thing crazy is that we’re stuck in this shitty mess,” Joel fumed. “I’m going to thin the herd. Better than sitting here waiting to die.”

“So you’re going to go sit up there and shoot until you’re empty and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to get to safety. Sounds like we’re going to have to run. Did you plan to leave Roz here? Because it’s going to take more than one of us to carry her.”

“No one’s getting left behind. Hand me some ammo,” Joel said.

Christy was quick, gathering up a couple of magazines and handing them to Joel. He shoved a few in his pockets and handed over his empties.

“I don’t think we have enough to fill them,” Christy said.

“Do your best,” Joel nodded.

“What about us? What do we do while you’re up there saving us?” I asked.

“What
can
we do, man? What the fuck can we do? Roz’s hurt, we’re completely surrounded, and we can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our asses. We don’t even know if she’s going to turn into one of those fucking things. Give me a better plan or get the hell out of the way.”

Joel shouldered me aside and stepped on the chair. He pushed his assault rifle out of the portal and then wedged himself in.

“We need something better than shooting them, come on Joel. Let’s think this through.”

“Like I said,” Joel yelled back. “Come up with a plan or sit down and shut the fuck up.”

“Don’t be an asshole, Joel. Roz needs you now, and so do Anna and Christy,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

Joel was pissed, yeah, but he wasn’t thinking straight. Even if he had unlimited ammo, could he really clear this entire area, kill the shufflers, and then get us out of here? The chances were nil. Fucking
nil
, and he knew it.

Joel dropped back into the cabin and got in my face.

“What do you have in mind, smartass?” Joel waited.

“Not having a fucking pity party, that’s one plan. You want to go up there and waste all of our ammo, be my guest, but then what?”

The camper bowed in on both sides.

“Then we get the truck unstuck and get the hell out of here. Thin the herd, because it’s worked before, so man up or sit down here and cry like a bitch,” Joel said.

“Shut up,” I said.

“Don’t tell me the fuck to…”

“They’re listening to us argue. Just shut up,” I whispered.

Joel stared daggers but nodded. We stood in silence as the moans rose around us.

###

05:35 hours approximate

Location: Just outside of Oceanside

We gave it a few minutes and sure enough, the pounding at the camper died down a little bit. Joel and I sat on opposite sides, him with one arm crossed around his AR-15 and the other on Roz’s shoulder, me holding my wrench and wishing I was out there swinging it, because I was fucking mad as hell.

Joel had every right to be a pain in the ass and he had every right to be angry at our situation, but taking it out on me was the wrong move. We’d seen a lot of shit, but I’d never seen him this close to losing it.

If we lost Joel, where would we all be? I’d like to say that the girls and I would be fine and dandy and live to fight another day. After all, Anna Sails was badass enough for both of us. The fact that she was a woman and smaller than me meant that I’d initially discounted her as needing to be protected. Turned out she was more than up for the challenge, and had been the one to protect me on many occasions.

Christy had latched onto us, me in particular, and I’d done my best to teach her everything I knew about surviving the zombie fucking apocalypse. She was good with a gun, but sometimes rattled easily. That was understandable, because she was a kid, but I’d seen her step up on more than one occasion.

Then there was Roz. She was always steady. When we’d met her she’d been outside of her house and intent on shooting her dad, who had already become a Z. Since then she and Joel had bonded. Now there was something wrong with her. The shuffler had done some damage, and unlike a zombie’s bite, it wasn’t turning her. But what did that mean?

After Roz had finished puking her guts out, Christy had been nice enough to slop the mess into a corner and out of the way, but the smell wasn’t any better.

Frosty barked from the front of the truck, then quieted down.

Some of the Zs continued to pound on the walls, but some had given up and wandered off--or so I hoped. In an ideal world they'd all be gone, coast clear. As far as I was concerned, we needed to just stay put and hope the bastards found another bunch of people to terrorize.

It was another ten minutes before Joel decided he’d had enough. He rose to his feet and moved to the center of the camper, but didn’t meet my eye. He looked back at Roz and then climbed onto the chair.

“Wait, Joel,” I whispered.

He ignored me and pushed his head out of the portal.

“Shit,” he said when he dropped back down.

“Told you to wait,” I said.

“Wouldn’t matter. Damn Zs are just hanging around out there like they know we’re still here. I’m gonna go see if the engine will turn over. Maybe it’s cooled…” He didn’t finish his sentence, because something hit the camper hard enough to make it shake.

Green eyes peered in from the entryway, and another pair appeared at the back door. I drew and shot before I’d thought it through. The sound of the 9mm in the tiny space was deafening, like I’d shoved cotton in my ears because a giant monkey playing cymbals had pounded my head.

Something hit the roof and Joel swung his assault rifle up. He dropped to one knee and aimed at the portal. When part of the ceiling buckled, he fired two rounds. There was a screech of pain, and then the roof buckled in another place.

I met the eyes of my companions and saw nothing but fear.

###