Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (49 page)

William stood, carefully glanced in both
directions, and lowered himself. “We could go either way. We’re
about mid deck right now and
Serenity
is
tied up on the other side.”

Rolling his eyes in frustration, Neil said,
“Well, I guess we’ll just follow the path of least resistance. We
ready?”

“Reload first,” Emma reminded them.

They both removed the emptied ammunition
magazines from their pockets and started to carefully feed bullets
back into them. For a moment, Jess watched the two of them, amazed
at their efficiency. She was still catching her breath and trying
to settle her mind. She wondered how either of them could even be
thinking about bullets.

She understood that was why the two of them
were still alive when so many others had fallen. They were just
ordinary people without specialized training of any sort, but they
took the time to do the little things to be better prepared to face
the big things.

Jess realized if she had any hopes of
survival she needed to be more like them. Still trying to wrestle
control of her breath, Jess pulled out her own spent ammunition
clips and began to load bullets from the box in her backpack into
them.

If she entertained any thoughts of searching
for her daughter, she would have to start thinking and acting the
way Emma did. Emma was strong and decisive and didn’t seem to fear
anything or anyone. Jess doubted she could ever be
that...impervious, but she could certainly add some much needed
toughness.

Neil and Emma climbed down the ladder
carefully. Once down, Neil and Emma plastered themselves against
the wall behind them, trying with all their might to disappear from
view. When they paused long enough to look over their shoulders,
they were frustrated to see that the wall behind them was actually
a very large window. Even more frustrating than that was the
collection of despondent, decaying faces gawking out at them from
the other side.

“Shit! So much for stealth.” Neil looked up
at William and Jess and motioned for them to hurry down the ladder.
“They know we’re here. We need to bust our asses if we hope to get
off this damned boat.”

In the handful of seconds it took for Jess
and William to climb down, scores of hands and foreheads pounded
against the windows. The moaning too began to vibrate the glass and
everyone’s chests.

“This way,” William said decisively. “Follow
me.” He led them to the right. He wasn’t necessarily leading them
away from the group Neil had spied originally although their
presence helped to seal his decision. The aft of the boat was to
the right and he thought that there would likely be fewer people on
that side. On that first day all those weeks ago, when the horrible
plague was still consuming everything and everyone in Whittier, the
crew of the cruise ship would likely have directed all of the
oncoming people to well controlled areas, most of which were toward
the front of the ship.

He didn’t know if his figuring was correct
or not, but it was something to go on and his adrenaline was
telling him that he needed to go. There was no need for
concealment. Their presence was known by everything within earshot,
so William started to run.

The deck was littered with personal affects
and other items, creating a makeshift obstacle course. William
dodged in and out of lounge chairs, making excellent time, and the
others were keeping up with him.

William didn’t see the gang of creatures who
burst through a partially broken door and slammed into him like a
freight train. Jess screamed while Emma pulled her trigger,
catching one of them just above the ear. Neil was stepping forward
to try and pry William loose when the unthinkable happened. William
was holding the AK47 in his right hand, which was swinging out and
away wildly. His hand reflexively gripped a little tighter to the
firearm and his finger, pressed against the trigger, pulled
slightly.

There was a single pop but it silenced all
other sound in the world. When the bullet hit Neil in the upper
chest just below his clavicle, his breath shot out of him with the
force of a hurricane. There was pain and some burning, but the
combination of his body’s endorphin output and adrenaline helped to
quiet most of the immediate sensation from the terrible wound.

He didn’t lose his balance, though he was
set back a couple of steps. He was, however, frozen like a statue,
seemingly cast in stone permanently in that position.

William couldn’t know what he had done, but
he did think enough to know that there was only one thing he could
do. He grabbed hold of the gaggle of ghouls and took them with him
over the railing of the ship.

Jess screamed in disbelief. What had just
happened? Where was William? His gun was still on the ground deck
and all the zombies were gone. She wouldn’t accept that the splash
she heard had included him. And, Christ, what about Neil? The
bullet went right through him. Jess saw it explode out the back of
his chest.

More than pain, Neil felt confusion. He saw
William topple off the edge of the boat and thought he may have
heard the resounding crack of a firearm just before the man
disappeared from view, but most of that was immediately clouded in
a thick haze.

In the next moment, he felt himself being
ushered along the deck by a pair of hands, which latched onto his
coat and didn’t let go. There was more shooting and maybe some
crying, but all he could recall from those terrifying minutes was
movement; harried, frantic, desperate movement.

Somewhere in the midst of all the running,
Neil slipped from consciousness.

William’s lodge and the lot on which it sat
was hemmed in on all sides by a dense wall of trees, a few still
stubbornly holding onto their leaves. Each individual tree was
narrow and insignificant, but taken as a whole, the forest was
quite imposing. The rise of winter and its lean days had only the
most minor effect on it by thinning the attending foliage.

When the moose wandered within view,
everyone stopped to wonder at it, especially the three children.
Danny, Jules, and Nikki had never seen a moose and to have such an
intimate view of one as it went about its daily business was
astounding.

The great gangly beast moved with a
confident agility, which surprised the children. At one point, the
moose reared up on its hind legs to get a better bite of some
arboreal treat and held its position like that for what felt like
forever. The children couldn’t contain their wonder and expressed
it with a series of
oooohs
and
aaaahs
.

Mia and Betsy were continually called back
to the window to see another of these natural wonders that each had
seen countless times before. Interestingly, as the children
discovered and shared, the two women seemed to be experiencing for
the first time again as well.

In time, Danny grew tired of watching and
wandered off to find something to eat. The time spent inside was
beginning to wear on his nerves and patience. He had become
accustomed to a more frenetic lifestyle and was having a hard time
trying to stay settled in the lodge, especially now that Neil was
gone.

Danny was smart enough to know that staying
at the lodge was a luxury he should enjoy. There was no guarantee
that their time in the lodge would last for very long and perhaps
that was why he wasn’t getting attached to it.

He wandered upstairs to find Jerry and
eventually found the young man sitting on the balcony in the cold.
Danny sat quietly and didn’t interrupt Jerry’s tranquil moment. He
couldn’t decide if the expression on Jerry’s face was one of
contemplation or self-persecution. Either way, Jerry’s look was not
warm or friendly. He barely acknowledged the boy’s presence. So
Danny just sat and watched the peaceful forest.

The fire brazier warmed the air immediately
around the two and helped to make the time more bearable. Danny
kind of hoped he would see Neil coming up the path from the cove
soon. He also had an interest in firing the rifle Neil had given
him again.

Danny was in full daydream mode, imagining a
scenario involving an assault on the house, which wasn’t beyond the
realm of possibility, when Danielle’s sudden appearance startled
him back with a jolt. Danny could tell that something was
wrong.

“It’s Nikki. She’s gone.”

Jerry shook his head from side to side but
said nothing, flabbergasted. His eyes were full of questions
though, and Danielle didn’t have any answers.

“C’mon,” she urged. “We gotta find her. We
need your help.”

Jerry entered the lodge and immediately
heard voices shouting in worried tones over and over,
“Nikkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiii!”

Jerry ran down the stairs and into the main
room. He saw Mia and Betsy moving purposefully from room to room.
They looked behind furniture and in closets. They looked everywhere
but it was Jules who finally pointed out, “I think her coat is
gone.”

As one, the adults all asked, “What?”

“Her coat’s not hanging by the door anymore.
Maybe she went outside to look for that moose.”

Danny added, “She did like that moose an
awful lot.”

Jerry closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Okay, we gotta go now. We find her and get back in immediately. We
haven’t seen any zekes recently but that doesn’t mean that they
aren’t out there. Jules, I want you to stay here with Mia in case
she comes back. Can you help Mia keep an eye out for her?”

Jules nodded her head and paced off to find
a good spot from which to watch.

“Abdul,” Jerry asked, “can you take the
veranda and watch for Nikki?”

Abdul nodded and Jerry added, “Please keep
them safe. Here,” and handed an AKS assault rifle to him. Abdul
reluctantly took the rifle, all too familiar on the continent from
which he had come.

He offered, “Maybe I should go.”

Jerry shook his head, “No. You don’t have
the clothing or the boots. We need to get you better gear first.
Just keep watch on the lodge and the woods. Keep those things away
and if you see Nikki, get her inside. We won’t be gone long.”

Abdul’s mind was struggling with the mixed
emotions his order produced. He should be going out after the
little girl. He was the fastest and was older than Jerry. It only
made sense that he would go, but there was no denying the relief he
felt in not having to go back out into the fray. He had no interest
in being a hero or a martyr. He also didn’t have the foggiest idea
of how to hunt or track anything in the woods. He donned one of the
several coats hanging on the wall mounted rack, hefted the assault
rifle over his shoulder, and then went upstairs to fulfill his
order.

The others walked determinedly into the
cold, finding some tracks in the snow which led away into the
woods. As an anxious group single-minded in purpose, they followed
the little footsteps cut into the fresh layer of snow. There were
deeper prints alongside the smaller ones, so they all figured Nikki
was following the moose.

With that thought in mind, none of them
figured she could have gone very far and spotting a moose in the
backdrop of white shouldn’t pose the most challenging of feats,
even from novices like Jerry and Danny.

The deeper they walked into the trees, the
thinner the snow on the ground was until there was virtually none
at all. Trees, leaves, and silence surrounded them. After a few
worried minutes had passed and they had only accomplished walking
themselves further into the forest, Jerry turned to everyone else
hoping for some direction, some suggestion, anything. The others’
faces were of no help whatsoever. They wore the same desperate
expressions. They were the school group having lost a student at
the zoo. They were the parents who couldn’t find their child at the
supermarket. None of them knew what to do.

Danielle suggested, “We’d cover more ground
if we split up to search. Betsy and I can go this way and you and
Danny can go the other. We’ll keep moving to the right and you keep
moving to the left. When you get to the road, just head back to the
lodge. She couldn’t have gone far. One of us will find her.”

Jerry nodded in agreement, despite his
reservations, and added, “Nobody takes any chances. You see
anything; you shoot first and then get the hell back to the lodge.
Like Danielle said, she has to be close. Those little legs couldn’t
have carried her far. She’s probably just lost.”

Jerry was definitely reluctant. He wasn’t
excited about splitting up their firepower but he also didn’t want
to take too much time in finding Nikki. She was so fragile and so
little.

He shook his head in frustration as they
went their separate ways, chastising himself for letting all this
happen. For months, Jerry’s confidence had grown and blossomed like
at no other time in his life. Nikki’s disappearance was threatening
to derail all of that. Deep down he knew it wasn’t his fault, but
he harbored a growing sense of guilt.

Jerry’s deep sigh and sagging demeanor was
fairly easy to decipher, even for a boy of Danny’s age. “It’s not
your fault that Nikki ran away,” he said reassuringly.

Needlessly defensive, Jerry corrected, “She
didn’t run away. She’s just following the moose.”

“It’s not your fault.”

A nearby crackle in the woods stopped both
of them in their tracks. Jerry scanned the trees, simultaneously
raising his rifle to his shoulder. Neither of them saw anything.
Jerry began to think that maybe it wasn’t anything, frozen clumps
of leaves falling to the forest floor perhaps. Danny nudged Jerry
and redirected his focus in another direction. There was something
scrambling through the trees with such a pace Jerry was unable to
identify it. He thought that it might be a moose for a few seconds
which gave him hope Nikki wouldn’t be far away.