Deathly Contagious (46 page)

The barn was sectioned off on both sides of the aisle, creating two large, open ‘stalls’ that housed our few cows. They shuffled around nervously, breathing heavily. Hayden was securing the door on the opposite side of the barn.

“Hayden!” I loudly whispered. He whipped around and rushed over. I strode to him, wrapping my arms around him the second he was in my reach. “Thank God.”

“Don’t do that again!” he spat angrily. “I didn’t know where you went. One second you where there and the next you weren’t! I thought you were dead!”

“I’m sorry,” I soothed.

“Sorry? Riss, how many times have I asked you not to go off on your own? It’s stupid and dangerous!”

“I’m fine,” I told him.

He let me go. “You just don’t care what it does to me, do you?”

“What? Of course I do!”

Rider cleared his throat. “There aren’t many more out there, are there?”

“No,” Jones answered.

“We should get back out there,” Rider suggested. “Now that the back door is latched from the inside. Are you armed?”

“Not anymore,” Jones said.

“Here,” Rider told him and extended a pistol. “Riss, where’s yours?”
“I dropped it,” I explained. “I have a knife. It’ll work.”

Rider nodded and went to the door. He slid it open and the four of us darted out. Two zombies greeted us as soon as we stepped out of the barn. Rider shot one and I knifed the other in the temple. The smell of death and decay was so heavy in the air I could taste it. Staying close to Hayden, we ran to the right of the barn. Hayden shot three zombies and I stabbed another.

Steven, the A2 Fuller thought was ready to move up and go on missions, was standing next to Gabby. He pumped a shotgun and fired at the advancing zombies. The bullets peppered their faces, killing them instantly.  A few yards down stood another group of soldiers. Taking the lead, Hayden ran over, joining in on the firing.

The number of zombies dwindled. One by one they dropped to the ground. Once again straying away from Hayden, I yanked a zombie by the hair. She stumbled backward and I kicked her in the face. When her skull didn’t so much as crack, I bent over to bring the pointy blade of the knife into her eye.

He must have turned from crazy to zombie overnight. A tall blonde haired S2 ran to me, his eyes set and his hands curled into firsts. I took on a defensive stance and waited for him to come to me. I leaned back out of his grasp and whipped the knife through the air.

It collided with his head with great force, but he didn’t fall to the ground. I pulled the knife out and rammed him again. Instead of sliding smoothly through his half functioning brain like I expected it to, the blade bluntly smacked against the bone.

Son of a bitch, the tip of the blade had chipped. I swung my arm back and hit him again, sending a stinging shock up my right wrist. Blood poured from the little break I had managed to make. I dropped the non-functional knife and smacked the zombie in the nose with my palm, driving the bone up into the brain.

He took a bewildered step back, blood dripped from his mouth, and he fell.  I jumped over the body and scrambled to get to Hayden’s side yet again. He fired one more round before lowering his gun. He turned to me and, in the growing daylight, I could see a fine mist of zombie blood dried on his cheeks.

He let out a deep breath and took my hand.

“Underwood!” Ivan yelled.

Hayden raised his hand up and signaled to Ivan. Half a dozen shots echoed across the battlefield that used to be our farmland. Together, Hayden and I jogged over to where Ivan, Brock, Alex, Mac, Jose, and several A2’s gathered.

Hayden and Ivan nodded at each other, silently saying ‘I’m glad you’re alive’. All at a loss for words, we stood in silence and let the whole effect of what had just happen sink in. Steven, Gabby, and Noah joined us, followed by four more A2’s, Rider and Jones.

“Where’s Wade?” Rider asked, his voice a harsh, shaky whisper. The feeling of ice water pumping through my veins made my heart skip a beat in fear when I realized he wasn’t with us. I craned my neck and searched the ground but didn’t see him.

“And Andy?” Steven asked.

“There are a lot missing. I don’t know who all came out,” Jones voiced.

Assuming the role as leader, Hayden said, “Comb the area for wounded. Make sure the dead are really dead. Who has a walkie?”

“I do,” one of the A2’s said and unclipped it from his belt.

“Radio in and see if they need help at the gates,” Hayden instructed.

The A2 nodded. The walkie talkie slipped from his blood covered fingers. With trembling hands, he picked it up and spoke into the walkie. “Front gate, do you copy?” A few seconds passed. “Front gate, do you copy?” he repeated, a little louder this time.

“Copy,” Jason’s voice spoke. I closed my eyes and mentally sighed the biggest sigh of relief.

“What is your zombie status?”

“Just strays,” Jason told us. “They didn’t get through the gate and the fence held,” he continued. “What about you?” he asked.

“Same,” the nervous A2 replied.

“Is everyone—” Jason began to ask when Fuller’s voice cut him off, asking for details. Hayden told the A2 to explain everything while we combed the land for the dead…our dead. I had to close my eyes to fight off the dizziness that threatened to take over when I flipped over a body that resembled Wade in build and hair color. I couldn’t bring my eyes to look at his face.

The gruesome image of the young solider getting his flesh ripped off and torn into the festering and ever-hungry mouth of a zombie made me shudder. My breath caught in my chest. I tried to suck in air but wasn’t able to. I exhaled what little oxygen was left in my lungs and forced myself to take a sharp intake or air. It whooshed out of my lungs too fast and my lungs spasmed and inhaled quickly again. Dammit. I was hyperventilating.

A hand settled on my shoulder. I jumped and opened my eyes. The face of the body that looked up at me belonged to a boy who had died a long time ago and turned into a zombie.

“Orissa,” Hayden said calmly. Wide eyed, I locked eyes with him. He knelt down next to me and put both hands on my shoulders. “Hey, Riss, it’s alright. Well, it’s not but what else am I supposed to say?” he added with a slight smile.

Still breathing rapidly, I nodded. Hayden put his hand on my chest.

“Slow down,” he instructed. “Take a deep breath.”

I nodded again, closed my eyes, and tried to muster up a happy memory. Delmont’s vile face flashed in my mind. No, I wasn’t going to let horrible flashbacks freak me out. I remembered hitting him and smashing his balls with the butt of the shotgun.

 My heart stopped racing. I recalled saving Olivia, the wonderful feeling of coming back to the compound, and seeing my friends again. I took a deep breath. I opened my eyes and looked into Hayden’s.

 I took another deep breath. I put my hand on Hayden’s.

“Thanks,” I panted. “I feel better. Sorry I freaked.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I think we all are freaked.” He stood and pulled me to my feet.

“No one else is panicking,” I countered.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. I had no idea how anyone else was faring. Keeping a tight grip on my hand, Hayden gently pulled me forward. “What are we going to do with all the bodies?”

“Pile them up and burn them, I’d guess,” Hayden said as he nudged a gummy with his boot.

“What a great bonfire,” I said sarcastically. “It’ll smell wonderful.”

“Shit, it will. I suppose we’ll have to move the bodies too; I don’t think it’ll be good to burn this on the grass our animals eat. I know it’s not contagious to animals, but won’t that make the grass bad?”

“It would make a bald spot. And yes, the rotting bodies turning to mush on the lawn is sure to give the grass a bitter taste.”

He nodded, let go of my hand, and shot a zombie who crawled at us with two broken legs.

“There’s another,” I pointed out, seeing movement. We went over to where the thing thrashed in its attempt to get up. Having been totally eviscerated, the zombie couldn’t stand because her torso had become too top heavy. Every time she pulled herself to her feet, her sliced open stomach and abs folded.

“It’s almost funny,” Hayden said, tipping his head and watched the zombie get up only to fall again.

“It is,” I agreed. “She’s determined, I’ll give her that,” I said with a slight laugh. Deciding to save a bullet, I waited until she fell again to snap her neck.

“Help!” someone shouted.

We snapped our attention up.

“Help!” the voice called again.

Eye eyes instantly flew to the fence line that was dotted with trees. A strange and large figure limped down the sloping pasture. My first thought was that some horribly deformed zombie had saved his attack for last, wanting to surprise us with his disturbingly large size.

I felt like a dumbass when my brain recognized the shape as a person carrying someone over their shoulder.

Hayden and I ran over but Ivan, Brock, and an A2 got their first. They took the body from the guy and gently laid it on the ground.

I jumped over a zombie, my boot landed in the splattered brains and I slipped. I caught myself and kept running.

Wade was kneeling over the person on the ground with his hands pressed to a wound on the soldier’s side. I wasn’t sure if I should feel guilty that my friend had been the one to make it out ok.

“Get a car!” Ivan yelled as he dropped to his knees. “He needs to get into the hospital ward now!”

I recognized him as one of the A3’s that guarded the front gate. His breathing was shallow and ragged; he had no doubt lost a lot of blood. Time seemed to pass incredibly slow as we waited for Jones to run off and return in a car. We kept our eyes peeled and shot three strays that meandered aimlessly around the pastures.

The wounded soldier was carefully lifted and set in the backseat of an SUV. Ivan and Jones drove him to the compound, radioing to Fuller to communicate with Padraic so he’d be ready to work a miracle.

All of the A3’s at the gates were accounted for. The young man who got ripped apart was William, Steven told us, turning away to hide the falter in his voice and the tears in his eyes. The guy who Wade rescued from the fence line was Andy. He had recently asked to retest, desiring to become an A3.

Miguel, an A2, was missing. Through a chaotic mess of a radio roll call, we discovered he was the only soldier not accounted for.

“He’s out here…somewhere,” one of the A2’s said, shaking his head. “Maybe he’s injured and can’t get up. We’ll find him.”

Under Fuller’s orders, we weren’t to move the zombie bodies unless we had gloves; he didn’t want to risk us getting infected. I looked at my blood covered hands and wanted to tell Fuller he was a little too late on his train of thought.

There were several pairs of work gloves in the barn but not enough for all of us. Deciding to pointlessly give a damn about manners, the guys suggested Gabby and I drive the trucks while the guys with the gloves picked up the dead bodies and hoisted them into the truck beds. Hayden happily pointed out that the machine gun in the bed of his truck didn’t enable us to throw the bodies into the back of it.

Still armed and on the lookout for stragglers, we drove around the pasture, picking up body after body. When the bed became full, we left the grounds of the compound and drove three miles down the street to dump the bodies.

It took all morning to gather up the dead. And we never found Miguel.

“I stopped counting how many zombies we killed after seventy,” Hayden told me with a sigh.  He took off the blood and pus crusted gloves and picked a piece of zombie splatter from my shoulder. “You look disgusting,” he said with a half smile.

“So do you,” I told him. “If my hands weren’t so dirty, I’d wipe the zombie blood from your face.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something—no doubt a dirty joke about me cleaning him up—but stopped. His hazel eyes locked with mine, sending that feeling that used to be most unwelcome through me. I took a deep breath and a step closer to Hayden. Things were far from ok, but with him, I’d be alright.

Half of the soldiers collected zombie body parts, doing their best to clean up the pasture. The other half of us fed the animals but didn’t dare let them out with the broken fence and gates. I knew fixing them would now be a top priority. I dreaded going out to work tomorrow; I was so tired the thought of work wore me out.

Exhausted, shaken, saddened, and sore we got into our vehicles and drove in silence to the compound. The quarantine situation—or lack thereof—didn’t hit me until we walked our bloody and muddy boot covered feet into the fake fancy ambiance of the estate’s foyer and saw Fuller in the doorway, arms crossed and looking sullen. I had never paid much attention to the first level of the house. I’d walked through the foyer to the stairs, either going up or going down, but that was pretty much it. I’d looked around in curiosity but never bothered to venture or investigate further.

There was a dining room to my right; someone had even taken the time to keep the dark wooden table dusted. French doors were always closed to my left, but through the thick glass I could see the pretense of an office set up with bookshelves and desks. Fuller ushered us forward. We crossed the foyer and strode past the stairs. I officially had never gone this far into the old house.

If the scene of a young, innocent boy getting his skin torn off by hungry cannibals wasn’t replaying in my mind, I would have been impressed with the grandeur of the estate. We situated in a room that was too fancy to be deemed a ‘family room’. With ease, we all fit in the room.

My feet hurt and my body ached. Sitting seemed wonderful, but I didn’t want to put my dirty ass on the spotless, ivory couches and armchairs. Fuller began talking, beginning with a very formal recap of events. He told us how proud he was of us and how we were an army the residents of the compound could rely on.

“Everyone will need to get their blood tested,” Fuller explained. “Every single one of you was exposed. After the blood test—and regardless of the results—you will be quarantined for twenty-four hours per our standard procedure.”