Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (9 page)

     Shari squeezed her eyes shut as she unzipped her sleeping bag, pulling it down from over her face.  The morning was predictably bright, and already hot at six a.m., just as virtually every morning had been over the summer. 

     "It's too bright for someone who only got three hours of sleep," she complained to Daphne as she reached into her bag for a spare bottle of water that she had poured into an empty bottle after filtering it.  After she had woken Daphne to take her place keeping watch, she had laid awake for around an hour, unable to sleep until three o'clock.  "Oh coffee," she said as she picked up the percolator, "what would I do without you?" 

     "Maybe we'll find somewhere secure where we can all nap later on," Daphne said.

     "I hope so," Shari said, reaching for her bag of coffee, "because I can only drink down so much of this stuff."

     "And by only so much," Daphne teased, "do you mean only a gallon at a time?"

     "No," Shari said in a tone of exaggerated defensiveness, "I only drink one cup at a time.  It may be several times throughout the day if I can help it, but it's still only one cup at a time.  And considering the circumstances," she added, "it's a worthy vice.  Anything that keeps me awake, alert, and on my toes is a good thing in my book."

     "I'm just busting your chops," Daphne said. 

     Shari started toward the far side of the building to empty her bladder in relative privacy.  "I forgive you," she called back over her shoulder, "since busting chops seems to be
your
only vice."  She quickly relieved herself, then stood.  As she zipped her pants, she looked out past the fence into the overgrown corn field that lay beyond the radio tower.  As her eyes scanned the horizon, her face fell. 

     "Oh, fuck, can't a woman piss in peace?" she uttered, already jogging back around the building to the camp site.  "We have to go," she blurted out to Daphne and Hugo, who were seated around the fire, eating protein bars.  "Now," she added with more urgency.

     "What's going on?" Daphne asked as she stood and began to pack her smaller bags into the trunk of her ATV.

     "Undead," Shari said, "headed this way.  And they're not the slow ones."

     Daphne's eyes widened.  "How many?"
     Shari shook her head, pulling on her boots and mask.  "I don't know," she said as she put on her cowboy hat.  "But a big crowd.  Maybe a hundred, I don't know.  I can't imagine what the fuck that many of them are doing way out here, most of them fresh and running."

     "How far away?" Daphne asked as she finished re-rolling her sleeping bag.

     "I don't know, maybe a quarter mile," Shari said.  "I expect them to be here any minute."  She grabbed the last item, the percolator from the campfire.  Daphne started the ATV, and Hugo climbed on behind her.  Shari took the key from her pocket and unlocked the gate.  She mounted her horse as Daphne sped out onto the road.  As an afterthought, Shari placed the keyring over the chainlink fence as she passed through the gate. 

    
Someone else might need it someday, and it's not doing me any good,
she thought as she followed Daphne back out to the road.  The crowd of undead was to their right, making their way down the road toward the radio tower.  They were only about fifty yards away, filling the road and the ten feet between the shoulder and the dense line of brush that ran parallel to the road.  Daphne turned left, the opposite direction of the crowd.

     "It looks like some sort of macabre marathon straight out of hell," Kandi said.  She and Shari watched as some of the undead succumbed to one too many snapped tendons and broken ligaments brought on by their heedlessness, and collapsed into the crowd, thusly trampled by their own kind.

    
I just wish I knew what in God's name they're all doing here,
Shari thought. 
It doesn't make sense...none of them look like they've been dead for very long. And that's on top of the fact that if they were the rotted ones, we would smell a crowd of them from this distance. 

    
The three of them had gotten about seventy-five yards down the road when they saw a bridge ahead crossing a creek.  Although the bridge was packed nearly full of crashed and abandoned cars, there was enough room to their left to squeeze through with the ATV.  As they approached the bridge, Shari saw undead approaching from the other side, fresh ones running toward them with the same speed and voracity as the crowd to their rear, who were closing in. 

    
What the fuck?
Shari thought. 
Why are they here?  There's no good reason for so many of them to be here, on both fucking sides of the creek.

     "I haven't the faintest idea," Kandi said, "but then again, I'm not sure that it matters right now." 

     Shari and Daphne looked around them, to their sides.  They noted the thick brush to the side of the road, about ten feet in to either side.  They looked at one another briefly, communicating an unspoken message--that leaving the road was a no-go.  The large crowd behind them was too close to wait for, and deal with, the small group approaching the bridge on the far side of the creek.  As Shari tried her best to jump-start her brain, producing a solution to their predicament, Hugo jumped up without warning and ran off behind them, toward the advancing wave of undead following them down.  Shari and Daphne watched, dumbfounded, as he took a pair of headphones from his backpack, placing them over his head.  They reminded Shari of the thick ones with the rubber gaskets she used to wear in elementary school, in the library when she listened to an audio book.

     "What the fuck are you up to?" Shari snapped.

     "
Shhh!"
Hugo hissed.  "I'm the only one who should be making any noise."  He put both hands in his jacket pockets, palming objects with each hand.  "You two can fight your way across that bridge if you don't have to worry about more coming up behind you when the killing slows you down.  There aren't nearly as many as there are back here."

     "But you're basically committing suicide!" Shari protested.

     "Just...just
do it!
" Hugo spat.  "Even if I do die, do you want it to be for nothing?  Don't you at least want to get away?"  He turned to see how close the vast crowd of undead had gotten, then turned back, bouncing with apprehension.

    
This isn't right,
Shari thought as she and Daphne started across the bridge.

     "And what could you do about it, even if you wanted to?" Kandi countered.

    
Not a damn thing, at this point,
Shari thought, gritting her teeth and arming her bow.

     Hugo glanced over his shoulder, noting the crowd of undead twenty feet to his rear.  He sighed, taking a flash bang from the pocket of his jacket and releasing the first pin.  He steeled himself, planting his feet firmly into the earth beneath him in an effort to strengthen himself for what he was doing.  He held down the lever, then took out the second pin.  As he released the lever, he rolled the grenade toward the undead legion that was virtually on top of him. 

     He rolled toward the shrubby treeline, covering his head with his arms as he rolled.  A moment later, he heard the deafening bang that he hoped would disorient the massive crowd of undead long enough for him to catch up with Shari and Daphne, and long enough for them to battle their way across the bridge.  He struggled to rise to his feet, his equilibrium thrown off somewhat despite the headphones and the fact that he had avoided seeing the flash as it went off.  He staggered toward the bridge, gazing briefly at the debilitated frontlines of the zombie crowd.  The ones furthest back weren't nearly as affected, but they struggled to breach the obstacle of their own kind, immobilized and befuddled, rendering the road impassable.  Hugo focused his eyes, with some difficulty, on Shari and Daphne, who had worked their way across most of the length of the bridge.  Upon hearing the grenade detonate, Daphne had turned around, heading in Hugo's direction.  Shari remained at the threshold of the bridge, ensuring it would be clear for Daphne and Hugo.

     Hugo walked feebly in Daphne's direction as she crossed the bridge toward him.  A few of the zombies managed to get to their feet, taking a couple of teetering, awkward steps before collapsing into the heap once again.  Daphne reached him, and he climbed gratefully onto the ATV behind her.  She regarded the undead throng disdainfully, flipping them the bird as she started back across the bridge.  There were two more zombies on the far side of the bridge, where Shari kept guard.  She raised her bow, pulling the string back as far as she could.  She took out the first one with a headshot, knocking the forty-something undead male off his feet.  She raised her bow again to take care of the remaining one, taking an arrow from her quiver.  As Shari nocked the arrow, a third zombie popped into Daphne's field of vision, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. 

     "Look out!" Daphne called as the undead assailant reached Shari's horse and lunged for her foot in the stirrup.  Shari looked down, kicking the zombie in the face just before it tried to bite into her leg, and knocking herself backward off the side of her horse in the process.  She lay stunned for a moment. 
I'm gonna feel that in the morning,
she thought.

     "Let's focus on making sure that we get to see tomorrow," Kandi said, pointing to the other zombie still headed in her direction.  She took her revolver from its holster, realizing she didn't have the time required to get up off of her back, draw her bow, and nock an arrow before the attacker was on top of her.  She pulled the hammer back, ready to shoot the undead teenage girl in the forehead, when she saw a wooden spike spin through the air, tousling the girl's blonde hair gently in the split second before it burrowed into her temple.  Shari squeezed her eyes and mouth shut as the corpse fell on top of her.  She rolled it to the side, then stood slowly.  She turned to her left, where Daphne waited fifteen feet away on her ATV. 

     "That one that tried to bite me," Shari began as she walked past Daphne and Hugo toward her horse, "it must've come from underwater.  I checked the whole area, under the bridge and everything, and both banks of the creek.  That's the only place it could've been.  Even though I know better, it's easy to forget they don't have to breathe." 

     She mounted Eva and they started down the road as the undead crowd they had left behind began to get their bearings and started across the bridge, quickly congesting the narrow opening.  Daphne and Shari rode a bit faster to put some distance between the zombies and themselves.

     They stopped when they had made a safe distance, having detoured east to a back road running alongside 57.

     "Where did you get that thing?" Shari asked Hugo, lighting up a smoke. 

     "What?" Hugo asked, looking absent-mindedly at the overgrown farmland around them.  "You mean the flash bang?" 

     Shari nodded.  "Yeah, the flash bang.  What else?"

     "Police cruiser," Hugo said.  "I figured there had to be something good in there, right?"

     "Yeah," Shari said, "I've found some nice stuff in those, too.  Not flash bangs, but useful stuff, all the same."  She paused for a moment, then continued.  "You ever used one of those before?" 

     Hugo shook his head.  "No."

     Shari frowned. 
Crazy little shit.
 

     "So you're telling me that was your first time trying one of those things--well, your first time using one
at all
, let alone on zombies?"  Hugo nodded.  "What made you so sure it would work?" she demanded.

     "Well," he said, giving her a dead-pan look, "it worked, didn't it?"  He sighed.  "I wasn't...I wasn't
totally
sure it would work, but I was pretty sure.  And besides, what if I had done nothing?  We all would have died, at least we
probably
all would have died, so what else was I supposed to do?"  He closed his eyes and pressed his palms into his eyelids.

     "We could have gone into the woods--" Shari protested.

     "Well, maybe," Hugo said, "maybe, if we left the ATV and your horse behind.  I'm not sure--I'm not even sure
we
even could have navigated that brush."  He pressed his hands into his eyelids again, and began to count slowly backward from twenty.

     "Look at that, princess," Kandi chastised.  "You've gotten him terribly upset, and all because you can't just be grateful that he was equipped for the task at hand."

     "Hugo," Shari said, "I'm sorry.  I appreciate what you did."  She shrugged.  "You're right.  We didn't have any good options, other than what you did.  And...I do have to admit, it got the job done."

     "The noise of the detonation ruins their equilibrium," Hugo explained as he lifted his face to meet Shari's gaze, his eyes red from rubbing, "much like it would with a human.  The zombies, though, the zombies--they're at a disadvantage.  I'm pretty sure the only sense they
have
is their hearing."

     "Yeah," Shari agreed, "I've long suspected that, too.  So when something really screws with their ears, they lose their balance and their equilibrium, plus they can't hear."  She smirked.  "I don't suppose you have any more of those."