Plague of the Undead (18 page)

“Has he?” Jacob demanded, growing colder and sterner by the syllable. “Has he done anything against our laws?”

Kelly swallowed nervously. “No,” she said at last.

“Then drop it,” he said. “We’re done talking, and it’s your watch.”

With that, he rose, turned, and left her.

He went off to his own little corner of the ruined farmhouse for a few hours of dream-haunted sleep.

“Jacob, wake up!”

Rough hands shook him from his sleep.

“Jacob, come on, buddy. We got problems.”

Jacob scrambled to his feet. He’d been in deep sleep, but he was wide-awake in an instant. Nick had his rifle in his hand, clutching it by the breach. He had Jacob’s in the other hand, waiting for him to take it.

“What’s going on?”

“Zombies,” he said. “I counted eight.”

“The herd?” Jacob said. He couldn’t believe they’d caught up with them already.

“I don’t think so,” Nick answered. “They were coming at us from due west, probably from the town. The ones I saw were looking pretty bad, like they were older.”

Jacob nodded and took his rifle. He tried to move quietly, but the house was old and the floorboards creaked beneath his feet, even when he tried to put his feet down slowly and deliberately.

Where the hall connected to the living room he hesitated. It was still dark, an hour at least till sunup, and the house was steeped in darkness. But from somewhere ahead of him he could hear feet sliding on the wooden floor, and wood groaning beneath an unfamiliar weight.

Jacob craned his head around the corner. Halfway across the living room was a dead man, badly decomposed, his clothes rotted into his skin and his face little more than strips of dark flesh hanging from dull yellow bone. He was stumbling toward the hallway. Behind him, another dark form was climbing through the empty window.

Jacob turned to Nick and signed what he’d just seen. Then he swung his rifle around so that he could use it as a club, took a breath, and charged around the corner.

The first dead man was faster than he should have been. Decomposition as bad as his should have slowed the muscles considerably. No sooner had Jacob rounded the corner but the man was on him, hands up and clutching for him. Jacob reacted quickly though. He brought his rifle down on the man’s face with enough force to snap the man’s back, breaking the neck. The zombie stopped, head staring at the ceiling, but didn’t fall. He just swayed there on his feet, unable to move.

Jacob swept the zombie’s legs with a single kick, and when the thing lowered its arms, he drove the rifle down again three more times, crushing its skull. The second zombie had fallen heavily to the floor after coming through the window, and Jacob was able to smash his head to a pulp before he could regain his feet.

Looking through the window, Jacob could see three, no, four others coming up the slope of the lawn.

At the same time, hands slapped against the front door.

From somewhere in the back of the house, they heard a scream.

Both men went running. Chelsea was standing in the hall in bare feet, a blanket pulled over her shoulders.

Nick took hold of her as Jacob kicked in the door to Kelly’s room. Kelly was on her back on the far side of the room, using an upturned wooden chair to hold a zombie at bay. Three more were pushing their way inside the window directly opposite Jacob.

“Help me!” Kelly yelled.

There was no time for clubbing the zombies. Jacob saw that in an instant. He flipped the rifle around and leveled it at the head of the zombie trying to get at Kelly. He fired once, sending the thing sprawling into the corner. Then he turned his weapon on the zombies coming through the window and fired until each went down. He rushed forward, grabbed one of the moldering zombies by the remnants of the coat left on its back, and pulled it through the window to the floor. He leaned out the window and saw more zombies coming up from the road.

Kelly was still on her back. Jacob went to her. “Are you okay? They get you anywhere?”

“No, I’m okay.”

He helped her to her feet, and then turned on Nick. “I thought you said there were eight of them out there.”

“I saw eight.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a shitload of them out there now. We got to get to the horses and get out of here.”

He went to the bedroom door, pushing his way past Nick and Chelsea. But no sooner had he entered the hall than the front door gave way with a crash.

Jacob stopped short.

“Okay,” he said. “Not that way. Everybody out the windows. We’ll head around back.”

They scrambled through the windows and ran around the side of the house. Three zombies had gotten into the corral and were trying to force their way into the stables. Jacob ran ahead, jumped the fence into the corral, and swung his rifle at the first zombie to turn his way. The zombie fell back against the doors to the stable but didn’t go down.

Jacob grabbed the rifle with both hands and smashed it down again on the zombie’s face.

That did the trick and the zombie collapsed.

But not before the other two put their hands on him. Jacob teetered over backwards and went down hard. The zombies fell on top of him and the stench of their rotten bodies made him gag.

Nick was there the next instant, pulling one of the zombies off him.

Jacob had his rifle up in a port arms position, jammed up under the second zombie’s chin to keep his rotted mouth away. With the other zombie off him, Jacob was able to push with his left hand and pull with his right, while at the same time twisting to his right. The zombie rolled off of him and landed on its back in the dirt. Jacob put his knees on the thing’s chest and smashed the rifle down on its nose three times before it stopped moving. He stood up then, chest heaving, to see Nick rising from a kill of his own.

“Get the horses ready to ride,” he said to Kelly and Nick. “I’ll hold these off.”

They nodded at him and ran for the stable doors.

“Wait,” Jacob said, grabbing Nick by the arm. “Give me your rifle. I’m empty.”

Nick handed it to him without hesitation and Jacob ran for the center of the corral. From where he stood he could see the yard filling with zombies. They came around both sides of the house like a river flowing around a rock. More were coming out the house’s windows.

Jacob ejected the magazine from Nick’s rifle and checked it. Eight rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.

“You guys need to hurry in there!” he said.

He looked across the yard at the zombies closing in around him. The yard between the corral and the house was flat, but overgrown, coming up to the hips of the approaching zombies. Beyond the house he could see the skeletal remnants of a barn, starlight shining through its Swiss cheese roof. In between the buildings were large clusters of elms and ash trees that broke up his view of the field.

He’d have to make do.

Off to his left a zombie was climbing over the top rail of the wooden fence that enclosed the corral. The top rail gave way under the zombie’s weight and the thing collapsed onto the next rail, bent over at the waist. The breaking wood made Jacob jump, and he fired off a bad shot that hit the zombie in its lower back. The thing fell face-first into the corral, rolled over, and stood up, completely unperturbed by the shot.

“Steady,” Jacob told himself. “Easy.”

He took a deep breath, steadied his front sights on the zombie’s nose, and squeezed the trigger.

The thing’s head snapped back and it fell to the ground.

He turned around, keeping his head on a swivel to cover every angle, and saw two dead women climbing the fence. A third zombie was a few feet to the left of them, but it was too badly decomposed for Jacob to tell what gender it was. It took two shots to put the first of the two women down, but he found his mark cleanly on the other one and dropped her with a single shot. The third zombie was having trouble climbing the fence, so Jacob turned his back on that one and focused on the others already on their way over.

“How’s it coming in there?” Jacob yelled.

“Two more to go,” Kelly answered.

“It’s getting deep out here. Make it fast!”

Jacob fired two more shots, both direct hits. Had he fired six or seven shots? He wasn’t sure; he’d lost count. Either way, he was running out of options. Four more zombies were climbing the fence, and dozens more were behind them.

“Come on, guys, hurry it up!”

“Almost there.”

“Crap.”

Jacob put down two of the zombies, but wasted his last two rounds on reckless, over-the-shoulder running shots. He missed both completely and was forced to turn the rifle around and use it like a club.

He swung at one of the zombies and succeeded in knocking it down, but failed to crush its skull. It got up, half its head caved in, just as more dropped into the corral. He was surrounded now and they were closing in on him. One of them groped at his face with fingers that were nearly fleshless. Jacob grabbed the dead man’s arm and felt it break in several places as he wrestled the zombie around in a circle. The thing was frail, but wouldn’t go down, no matter how he tried to throw it off balance.

Realizing he couldn’t make it fall, he twisted the thing’s arm until he was behind it. He moved the zombie around the corral, using it as a shield as he ran it into other zombies, knocking them down or at least out of the way.

He was about to holler out again when the doors suddenly burst open and Kelly and the others came charging out. Nick was in front, a white metal bar in his hand. Behind him, Kelly held the reins to three horses, hers and Chelsea’s in one hand and Jacob’s horse in the other. Jacob ran for the empty horse while Nick swung his metal bar like a battle-axe, cutting his way through the crowd.

He reached the gate to the corral and kicked it open.

“Come on,” he yelled.

Kelly and Nick spurred their horses as they crashed through the zombies, bounding for the gate. Zombies grabbed at their legs and hips, but they were already moving fast, and the dead fingers did little more than clutch at empty air.

Seconds later, they were through the crowd and galloping hard toward the road. The sun was coming up, and to the east the blacktop remnants of the highway were brushed with molten copper. Arbella was that way, Jacob thought, and for a moment, let himself dream.

Just fifty miles. So close.

But it might as well have been halfway round the planet. For coming up the road, and spreading out to form a line in the fields on either side of the road, were riders.

Riders they knew.

And Mother Jane and Casey were right out front.

They caught sight of each other at almost exactly the same instant, and for a moment, neither man moved. Jacob stared at Casey and Casey back at him, over a distance of perhaps a hundred yards.

And then Casey let out an earsplitting rebel yell and charged.

“Ah, Jacob,” Nick said.

“Ride!” Jacob said, and they wheeled their horses as one and charged toward the dead town of Malden.

In the early morning light, shadows still pooled between the trees and the low one-story buildings. Jacob could see forms moving toward the road, but they were too far away for him to tell whether they were zombies or animals or more of the Family closing the net around them.

He chanced a look behind him and saw Casey closing fast. They were out of options. In another minute he’d be on them, and he’d be the only one with a loaded weapon.

“That way!” Jacob said, motioning to Kelly toward a low line of houses off to the right.

“Where?” she asked.

“Find us a hole,” he said. “Anywhere.”

With Chelsea’s horse by the reins, she turned sharply to the right and went between the ruined shells of two homes. The vegetation was thick and it sliced into them as they charged into it. Jacob felt it pulling at his clothes, at his arms, at his face, but he urged them forward. It was their only chance to evade the riders on their tails.

“Hold on,” Kelly said.

Jacob glanced forward just as Kelly and Chelsea jumped a leaning metal fence. Chelsea screamed and nearly flew out of her saddle, but Kelly was there to catch her. It was a bad landing, but Kelly got them under control and pointed the horses to the left, through a gap in the underbrush.

Jacob and Nick followed close on their heels.

They emerged onto the next street and found it just as overgrown as the last. Behind them they could hear Casey yelling for the other riders to close in, but they were having a hard time of it because of the underbrush. Kelly had done well threading a course through it. Now she was pointing down the lane, which was little more than a shallow area between two walls of encroaching trees, and motioning for Jacob to look. Six zombies, so badly decomposed they could barely walk, were staggering out of a house halfway down the block.

Can’t go that way
, she signed to him.

No, wait
, he signed back. He motioned toward a gap in the vegetation that led over to the next street.

She rode up close to him, still holding Chelsea’s mare by the reins. The young girl looked scared, but alert, and Jacob saw she was squeezing her knees to the horse’s sides. She was learning.

“What is it?” Kelly whispered.

“Through there,” he said.

She shook her head. “Too obvious.”

“I know. That’s what I’m counting on.” He glanced over his shoulder. Casey and the other riders had split up into small groups, perhaps realizing that their prey had used up all their ammunition, and were closing in on their position. “We need a distraction. Let’s go.”

She frowned, but he knew she trusted him enough not to ask questions.

She turned her horse and Chelsea’s toward the gap and Jacob and Nick followed. When they emerged on the other side, Jacob asked Nick for the metal pipe he carried in his saddlebags.

“For what?” Nick said. “You already took my gun. What am I supposed to use?”

“Really? Come on, give me the pipe.” He gestured toward a thick growth of trees to the west. “You guys go over there. Wait for me. Stay out of sight.”

Reluctantly, Nick handed over the last weapon he had. He, Kelly, and Chelsea rode over to the place Jacob had pointed out and were instantly lost in shadow.

Good, Jacob thought. At least they’ll be out of sight.

He guided his horse into a well in the vegetation and waited. Casey was a hard driver. There was no other way he and the other survivors from the Family could have gotten away from the herd and still managed to drive this far south unless they rode long and hard. And he clearly had some strategic sense, or at least some intuition, for he’d read Jacob and the others right in their intent to use Malden as their turning east point. But despite all that, he was brash. He believed absolutely in his own superiority, and he certainly thought he had Jacob on the run, unarmed and easy pickings. It was why he’d allowed his riders to split up into one-and two-man groups.

He dismounted from his horse and lashed the reins around a stout, low-hanging branch.

The saddlebags he’d inherited along with the horse had a set of wire cutters and some duct tape in them. He slid those into his back pocket, shifted the metal pipe to his right hand, and crept into position right at the opening to the gap. He heard twigs snapping in the underbrush and he clutched the pipe tighter, praying that he’d read Casey and the other riders correctly.

Thomas, one of Casey’s brothers Jacob had seen around the caravan, emerged a moment later, ducking his head down next to his horse’s neck to avoid the brush.

When he straightened up again, Jacob darted out of hiding and swung the pipe, meaning to catch the rider under the chin but instead only managing a glancing blow off his shoulder.

Thomas grunted and twisted in the saddle, but didn’t fall.

Before he had a chance to recover, Jacob spun back around the other way and swung for Thomas’s ribs. He connected with a solid blow that caused the rider to sag to one side.

The horse tried to bolt, but Jacob caught its reins and steadied it.

Thomas was trying to right himself in the saddle. Jacob didn’t give him the chance. Before the rider could sit up straight, Jacob swung again for his chin, and that time connected with the solid crack of metal on bone.

Thomas twisted off the saddle, landing heavily in the grass. The horse ran into the middle of what had once been the street, leaving Jacob face to face with Casey’s brother. He advanced on the man and quickly stripped the rider’s revolver from his holster. Jacob jammed it into the waistband at the small of his back, pulled the wire cutters from his back pocket, and flipped Thomas over onto his stomach.

The rider muttered something—a threat, a plea, Jacob didn’t know and didn’t care at this point—and tried to pull away, but Jacob held him firm. Jacob grabbed the man’s right wrist and pulled it up. Then he grabbed one of Thomas’s fingers, pried it apart from the others, and lopped it off with the wire cutters.

Thomas began to scream. The noise was horrible, such pain, such terrible, terrible pain.

Jacob backed away, horrified at what he’d just done. Thomas was rolling around in the grass, holding his bleeding hand, wailing uncontrollably in pain. At first the noise scared Jacob. A lifetime of conditioning had taught him that noise equaled death, especially out here in the wasteland, but as he looked around and saw moldering corpses lumbering out of one hiding spot after another, he realized he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

He ran to Thomas’s horse, removed the saddlebags and the rifle he found there, and then mounted his own horse and took off at a gallop.

He met up with Kelly and the others a few blocks away.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

Jacob looked back. He could see a few of Casey’s riders in complete disarray, men shouting and twisting their horses around as more and more zombies flooded into the area. There’d been more riders than he suspected.

More zombies, too.

“Jacob,” Kelly said. “What the hell is going on?”

“A distraction,” he said. He nodded to the west. “Let’s get out of here.”