Dead: Winter (19 page)

As he reached the top of the first ridge, he saw what had brought the zombie horde. A narrow road passed by below, and cruising along its confined course was a band that looked like the marau
d
ers at the end of
Dawn of the De
ad
mounted on mod
i
fied choppers.

These were not your run-of-the-mill motorcycle. Each one was an armored war machine; part
Road Warrior
, part
Knigh
t
riders
. Many were of the three-wheeled variety, and all of them had armor plating with big kite shields in the front. Each was equipped with a sidecar, and in that car was a pe
r
son decked out in what looked like hellishly modified baseball catcher’s gear. These individuals were wielding an assortment of weapons that would make any LARP fan jealous.

“They aren’t gonna get out of there,” Shari whispered.

Kevin scanned the entire scene. Whoever these people were, they had driven down into this va
l
ley and built quite a camp for themselves beside a river. The only problem was that they were at the bottom of the valley and it had allowed them to be trapped. From their vantage point at the top of the sheer ridge, Kevin could see that a horde stretching for at least a mile had cr
e
ated a big half moon that effectively reached both ends of the little valley these people had set up camp in. The horde had pro
b
ably found them by sheer coincidence, but it would be these people’s undoing.

“The bikes can’t make it up this hill,” Kevin observed. “They’re too heavy and would bog down, maybe if the ground were dry…but not now.”

“Is there any way we can help them?” Shari asked.

“Probably,” Kevin admitted. “But we don’t know anything about these people. They could be like Shaw and his men.”

“Or they could be like us,” Shari insisted.

“But that is a risk I can’t take.”

They watched for another moment as the bikes zoomed back and forth. Even with the windows rolled up, the engines could be heard…along with the screams. Kevin glanced to his left and saw the wall of walking dead swinging around, coming up on their position. It was time to move.

“We can’t just leave,” Shari insisted.

“Actually, we can. And did you see any of those people waving us down?”

Shari thought about it. The people were not close enough that she could see any faces, but she a
l
so realized that not one of them had waved their arms or done anything to try and get atte
n
tion from the people sitting in the military truck watching them be overwhelmed by thousands of zombies.

“No,” Shari admitted.

“So they were either just as concerned about us as they were about the zombies, or they realized that if we drove down there, we might not make it out, and they didn’t want to drag us down with them.”

“Have we really reached that point?” Shari asked sadly.

Kevin didn’t reply. He scouted the horizon, found the hole in the oncoming horde and pointed the truck in that direction. Val
a
rie looked back and forth between the two, but remained silent. She hadn’t been away from Sage Farm for very long, but she already missed it. Something about seeing so many more sick people just didn’t feel right to her.

Two hours later, the truck was winding through the once well-to-do neighborhood that bordered the south side of the country club. A few of the undead still trapped inside the homes that had not yet been searched and emptied of everything useful pounded impotently on windows, some pawed at the insides of the cars, and a few turned to follow the sound.

Kevin pulled up to the brick wall and backed the truck up as close as possible. He knew they would not have long to unload before unwanted company arrived.

“Okay, Shari, help Valarie over the wall and I will start empt
y
ing the cargo,” he instructed.

“Shouldn’t we both unload?”

“Normally yes, but I don’t want her on this side of the wall when the first zombies show up.”

“What’s a zombie?” Valarie blurted. She’d heard that word before and she hated it when she couldn’t remember things. Now this nice man, Kevin, and one of her favorite singers in the entire world were using that word over and over. It had to be i
m
portant.

“Umm…those are the sick people,” Shari said.

Valarie saw the look on Shari’s face. It was the look people used when they spoke to her and thought she couldn’t unde
r
stand. An image stuck in her mind. It was her meema; she was on the bed after her legs had been cut off. Meema had opened her eyes, but…

“They weren’t my meema’s eyes,” Valarie whimpered.

“What?” Kevin and Shari both turned to face Valarie. Her brown eyes were welling with tears and the dark brown skin of her cheeks were slick and shiny from them.

“My meema opened her eyes, but they were wrong. They were not my meema’s eyes.”

Kevin took a quick look around. He wanted to be sure that they had time to deal with this now. So far, nothing was headed their way.

“You’re right, Valarie.” Kevin put his hands on her shou
l
ders. “Your meema has passed away. So have lots of people. Do you know what that means?”

“It means they are with Baby Jesus,” Valarie sniffed.

“Right,” Kevin agreed, placing his beliefs aside for the time being. “Only, now, when people die…pass away…sometimes they get back up.”

“Like the night time monsters.”

“Huh?” Kevin wasn’t sure she understood what
he
was saying, and he was certain that he didn’t understand what
she
was saying.

“My Uncle Skip used to make me popcorn and we would watch movies. His favorite was the
Night of Live
Monsters
.”

She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant. “You mean
Night of the Living Dead
?”

“Yeah, the night monsters…” Valarie put her arms out and aped a convincing zombie walk. “I’m gonna get you, Barbra,” she said in a deep voice that would have made a Boris Karloff impersonator proud.

“Well some of the people have become the night monsters,” Kevin said, deciding it would be best to try and use her language instead of his own.

“But Uncle Skip said not to a’scairt because it was just pe
o
ple pretending.”

“And he was right,” Kevin said. He noticed a few shadows beginning to stir up the road a ways. “But we will talk about this later. Let’s have a contest to see who can unload the back of the truck fastest.”

Valarie looked at Kevin and sniffed. She felt a little silly for crying in front of Shari. She felt even sillier for thinking there could be such things as the night monsters. Even if they were all gray looking like the ones on Uncle Skip’s television.

Thirty minutes later—during which time Kevin left twice instead of helping which Valarie thought was a little bit rude—they had all the boxes and bags out of the back of the truck. Halfway in, another girl came to help. Valarie thought that she might be the prettiest lady she had ever seen, but she would ne
v
er tell Shari. She didn’t think that Shari liked the other girl very much. Twice, Valarie caught her sticking her tongue out at the pretty lady who really liked Kevin a lot.

“I want to see
her,” Jamie insisted.

Dr. Zahn had taken Teresa into the bathroom, which was now actually in the process of becoming the children’s room and already had three bunk beds lining the walls. She had given me specific i
n
structions: Nobody comes in.

“Jamie, you will be the first visitor allowed to see her when she is done, but right now she needs to have everybody out of the way,” I insisted.

I had to admit, over an hour had passed and I was aching to know what the hell had happened. Jamie insisted that she hadn’t been bitten, and I knew Teresa well enough to know that if she had, she wouldn’t keep it a secret. Still, there was no denying what I’d seen. Her eyes had the tracers that gave away the fact that indicated a person had whatever it was that was turning folks into the walking dead.

We’d learned the hard way after I’d killed somebody who’d been bitten, but hadn’t turned or showed any signs of illness—the black tracers seem to be the giveaway that a person is infec
t
ed. It was a tough lesson that the bite was no guarantee that a person would turn. I’d followed a man out i
n
to the woods with a few of his friends who’d also been bitten and then shot them in the head. When I’d returned, a group of new arrivals were wai
t
ing. One of them had a three-week-old bite.

A short time later, we learned something else. Being immune is one thing, but even if you are immune, death after being bitten is enough to bring you back as one of the living dead. Of course, it would be great if there were facilities available to check out that stuff with scientists or what have you…but that ain’t happening.

“Jamie,” I tried to sound firm, but still be sympathetic. After all, he was the father of the child T
e
resa was carrying. “I pro
m
ise that you will see her first, as soon as Dr. Zahn gives the okay.”

Just then, Jon and Billy came up. Billy leaned close and whispered something in Jamie’s ear and the two boys walked away, Billy’s arm around Jamie’s shoulders. Jon waited until they were gone b
e
fore he spoke.

“Brad says that the newcomers are leaving in an hour to perform the rites for their dead. He and Jake are going to escort them to their site, then they are going to swing south on a supply run,” Jon said.

“Is it really such a good idea to make a run now?” I asked. It had been snowing for the past seve
r
al hours and showed no signs of letting up. The temperature had warmed to a balmy twenty-eight degrees.

“The newbies said that there is another settlement…or rather, that there used to be one. It got overrun a few weeks ago. That was how they wound up losing a few of their group.”

“So what makes it any more likely that we can succeed in looting the place when they failed?” I asked. After all, there had been twelve of them that actually made it to our camp. Of that bunch, three had been put down after arrival. One was a child that I’d had to punch a spike into the forehead of a
f
ter Su
n
shine’s sleeping poison had put her down and out. How were two of our people going to fare better than over a dozen of theirs?

“Jake knows the location and thinks he can get in and out with minimal danger,” Jon replied.

I wasn’t going to dispute ability with Jon or his men, but I still thought he might be showing just a little too much overco
n
fidence. “I don’t like the idea of a two man team making a run,” I protested weakly. Honestly, my heart just wasn’t into it with Teresa dying in the next room. Or undying…or whatever it could be called.

“Steve.” Dr. Zahn opened the door and called me before I could say just how much I no longer cared.

I gave Jon a half-hearted pat on the shoulder and stepped past the doctor and into the room where Teresa lay wrapped in blankets on a bottom bunk of a bed painted with stars and spac
e
ships. Right away I noticed the smell.