Scavengers. Part 26

"There's a lot of them," David said. He grabbed a rifle leaning between the seats and prepared to fire.

In front of them, Private Brooks wasn't driving. Instead he was firing into the wave of infected that was now fanning out toward them from the road and trees.

"d.a.m.n it, drive!" Abbott shouted, and reluctantly waited for the doctor and Brooks to turn around.

"They're behind us!" Shaun screamed. They shot glances backward to see their escape route being closed off by a wall of infected zombies, lurching, shambling, and moving closer to the two Jeeps. But what gave them reason to pause was not so much the now too terribly familiar vision of sick humans hungry for flesh, but the awkwardly out-of-place vehicle that led the group behind them. In front of the ma.s.s of gore-smeared infected an Army Jeep drove at a jerky pace, stopping and moving, stopping and moving, as if the driver were having trouble with the manual transmission, just barely pulling it off.

"Holy s.h.i.+t, they're driving." Abbott stared, incredulous.

"And shooting," David added, as the road beside the car was raked with bullets.

"The h.e.l.l did they get guns?"

One zombie wore the tattered remains of an Army uniform sans sleeves. He kept pulling on the rifle strap of the rifle held solidly in the hands of the infected walking beside him.

"I'm guessing whatever soldiers were sent to the camp earlier didn't get a happy reception," David said, ducking at each new gunshot.

"f.u.c.k," Abbott grabbed the rifle from David's grip and fired off a few rounds, picking off a handful of infected in the process. Those behind the fallen simply stepped on or over the fallen zombies and continued toward them.

Brooks and Dr. Robbins ran back to them and piled into their Jeep. Robbins climbed stiffly into the back and wedged in next to Dejah. Brooks launched himself into the bed of the rear cargo area through the open back of the Jeep.

"Safety in numbers," Brooks said.

Abbott laughed grimly. "Are you seeing the same s.h.i.+tstorm I'm seeing here? Cause we ain't got any f.u.c.king numbers. Our a.s.ses are zombie food."

Shaun clung to Dejah's arm.

The infected surrounded them from every direction. Brooks and Abbot fired, but there weren't enough bullets to kill them all. David gripped a pistol and joined the firefight, but again, for every zombie he killed, three more appeared behind it. When the magazines were empty, there wasn't any time to reload. Premature night fell upon them, as all remaining daylight was blocked by the awful visions grasping hands ripping open the doors, gnas.h.i.+ng teeth, open sores, tattered flesh. Hands grabbed them, pulling their clothes, their limbs, their hair. Their screams and shouts rose over the grunts and moans of the zombie crowd. Shaun was pulled away from Dejah by a mult.i.tude of hands.

"Dejah! Dejah!" he shrieked, fighting, kicking, hitting whatever he could connect with, but there were too many of them.

"Shaun!" Dejah called. She couldn't see where he was through the wall of infected humanity. So many of them. She felt smothered. Suffocated. The smell of them was awful, like sweat-damp rotting meat smeared with feces. "Shaun! David," she choked.

"Dejah!" David shouted from somewhere a few feet away.

"I'm over here, still by the Jeep," she yelled in reply. "Where's Shaun?" Terror filled her voice. The kind of terror only reflected in the voice of a mother who has lost her child. She clawed and fought the mobs of hands holding her. She became an enraged animal, letting loose all of her fear and rage in a furious attack. It kept them at bay, but she was not released. She kicked, hit, yanked, leaped, and jumped, trying to see over their heads, trying to see where they'd taken Shaun.

She didn't hear him shouting anymore.

G.o.d no. Please G.o.d, please....

A car horn sounded, long and loud, and every one of the infected monsters froze where they stood. They seemed fearful to even breathe. The car horn stopped. It had come from the zombie-driven Jeep.

"What are you doing?" a raspy voice shouted over the heads of the crowd. "You were told not to harm them."

Low murmurs buzzed through the foul-smelling crowd. A few reluctantly glanced at the infected person standing beside them as if they'd just awakened from a confusing dream in a place they'd never seen.

The hands tightened their grips on her arm as Dejah strained against them, still looking for Shaun.

"Shaun? Shaun!" she shouted.

"Silence, woman," the rasping voice commanded. She could see an infected man in a blue plaid s.h.i.+rt, standing on the seat of the Jeep he was driving. He was the one talking to them. Infected, and driving ... and talking. Giving orders.

"Do what he says, Dejah," David said. A zombie near him slugged him in the stomach. David doubled over, holding his gut still healing from the knife wound. He wheezed as the wind was knocked out of him. From what she could see of his face, pain seared him, but the infected clinging to him didn't release their holds. They've organized, she thought, not willing to contemplate what that meant just yet.

"Silence!" Blue s.h.i.+rt said again. The infected man giving orders climbed from the Jeep and went to the road. The ma.s.s of zombies parted for him like water for a shark's fin. As the mob split for the man to pa.s.s, a puddle of blood and organs staining the road came into view.

Dejah gasped. As the zombies continued to step aside, Shaun's torso, torn and gutted, glistening under the rays of dying sunlight, lay splayed in plain sight. Arms wrenched from sockets. Blood pumping from the stump of his neck where his head once was. Intestines coiled out over the road like gray skinless snakes, torn free from the lower half of his body. s.h.i.+t fell from the shorn ends in brown clumps into the red-black blood on the asphalt. Not far from the ma.s.s of gore lay a leg, a section of blood-slick bone stripped of its flesh where a thigh used to be. And on its foot, below the blue jeaned knee, was a s.h.i.+ning black boot, courtesy of the U.S. government.

The dawning realization of what she saw spread slowly from the core of her spine to an awful place deep within.

"Shaun!" Dejah screamed hysterically. "No! No-you-f.u.c.king-didn't-you-G.o.dd.a.m.n-monsters-NO!" In a berserker rage, she thrashed and flailed against the hands that held her. David shouted for her to stop. She didn't care. Tears filmed her eyes, flowed to the ground. She was a wailing mess of rage as she flung herself against her captors, struggling to reach Shaun's remains. They closed in around her. She heard their growls and moans but she cursed them and screamed louder, as if her fury was a scalding power in itself, and she could destroy them all, see them ripped to shreds, see them torn limb from limb, see their guts slithering from their rotten carca.s.ses and make it all happen from the sheer force of her screams, wrenched as they were from the deepest pit of pain and grief.

They crowded her. Their sheer ma.s.s finally restrained her completely. A fetid, filthy hand clamped over Dejah's mouth, silencing her shouts into m.u.f.fled mews. She slumped to the road, sobbing.

A few infected crouched around the scattered parts of Shaun's corpse, eating in an animalistic frenzy.

"Stop," Blue s.h.i.+rt said.

"Hungry," someone said in a sound that was more grunt than word.

"Bal Shem commands to bring them to the farm," Blue s.h.i.+rt said in his stilted tone of authority. He awkwardly held a rifle, military issue, in his right hand. The left hand, which he used to steady the weapon, had twisted fingers, as if they'd been broken.

The huddled group continued devouring Shaun's remains.

Blue s.h.i.+rt raised the rifle, leveled it. It kicked in his hands as it fired. Three of the defiant infected fell over, splas.h.i.+ng into the pile of carnage. "I said stop."

The others backed away, but there was reluctance and grumblings against the leader. There were more infected wis.h.i.+ng to eat than were wis.h.i.+ng to obey the man in the blue s.h.i.+rt. As if visibly struck by a surprise solution, and out of apparent fear that the horde was growing more feral and would turn on him as well as the healthy, Blue s.h.i.+rt stood straighter as he offered them a compromise: "Eat this woman and finish the boy. The rest will be taken to Bal Shem."

David sprang into action. He'd been docile long enough that the sudden move caught the infected by surprise and he ripped his right arm free. He swung a punch at his nearest captor, but his liberation was short lived. He was immediately subdued by a dozen growling zombies. "Dejah!" he yelled, voice taut with anguish.

Dejah was numb. She hung from the arms of her captors, head bowed. Certainly Selah was dead. Shaun was dead. Soon, she would watch David die as well. If only she could die once and for all ... no, no you can't give up.

They descended upon her, ripping and tearing. Blocking the pain from her mind, she watched the swaying tops of the thick pines and the autumn sky growing darker, a deep lavender that would give way to a purple-black night. A flock of geese, black, like dots of embroidery st.i.tched upon the dove-gray sky, moved in a ripple of motion in front of soft wisps of cotton clouds. A sharp pang snapped her from her daydream. Instinct willed her to fight.

You can't give up. Not now. Not yet.

It was impossible to say where the energy came from, but it was there just the same. She threw her full weight backward to escape. Her shoes slipped in the wetness of her own blood, and she expected to hit the pavement hard, but she fell back into a zombie embrace. She struggled.

An infected zombie rent the soft skin of her abdomen as another attacker bit hard into her neck with broken, ragged teeth. Blood spurted from her throat. Dejah fought, but her strength was waning. She felt herself opened up. Strangely enough, although she'd wished for death, she realized, now that it was imminent, she didn't want to die.

The reek of the vile creature filled her nostrils. She was weak and nauseous. She collapsed into the zombie's arms.

"No," she heard a guttural voice. Not the first one who'd been giving orders, but someone something else. "Stop. We have orders to bring them back alive."

The infected that held her loosened its grip. "Blue s.h.i.+rt said-"

Dejah tried to focus on the figure that came toward them. She couldn't make out much of its features, but could tell it was one of them...one of the talking ones. The smarter ones.

"Let go," it commanded. Did this one have power like the man in the blue s.h.i.+rt? she wondered in the half-dream state of lightheaded blood loss. Bony arms released her and she fell. Others came, drawn by the scent of her fresh blood. She heard David shouting her name and her mind whispered to her in the memory of his arms embracing her, and his tender kisses trailing over her neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. And then everything began to blur in a swirl of blackness.

"Stop! That one is right. I was wrong." Was there fear in the blue-s.h.i.+rted one's voice? she wondered in a near delirium. Could they feel fear? "Bal Shem want them alive. Take them back to camp now."

The infected that gathered around Dejah grumbled.

"Enough!" Blue s.h.i.+rt shouted. A gunshot punctuated his renewed command. The blood-covered faces of the infected looked up from their prey and stood, satisfied that they'd been given their fair share of the hunt despite the abrupt halt to their feast. Dejah's body still had meat enough for a meal. "Throw body in the Jeep. Take it back for later."

"Take her back," the talking one with the guttural voice echoed the order.

They shuffled around her. Bones cracked and ligaments snapped as they hoisted her aloft.

Yes, back, she thought. Take me back.

The zombies carried her like a slab of meat, throwing her into the back of the Jeep. Her head struck the metal edge of the cargo bed with a loud bang. The last breath in her lungs escaped.

David hung from the hands holding him, his knees sc.r.a.ping the asphalt of the road. He cried, his heart broken. Shaun's words haunted him: And have you lost anything in all of this?

"Dejah!" he shouted, over and over again until her name became a woeful groan. Tears blinded him. He couldn't free his hands to wipe them from his eyes as they mingled with dirt and blood. The gore-streaked hands shoved him into a Jeep, jostled beside Abbott and a badly beaten, Brooks. He didn't see Robbins in the fray.

After they'd been loaded onto the Jeep, they traveled along County Road 3516 before arriving at the forested quarantine camp. Within a frame of thick oaks and southern pines, a clearing used as a cattle ranch and hay meadow appeared as they topped a rise and came through the trees. From the road, they could see barbed wire fences separating pastures from the camp. A large, weather-beaten barn near the edge of the clearing was surrounded by tents at one end of the camp. The center of the camp was composed of multiple rows of perhaps thirty tents. A row of FEMA trailers with a dilapidated barn behind them formed the end of camp nearest them as they came down the rise. The whole layout resembled a capital-I lying on its side. The county road gave way to a narrow dirt road leading into the camp as the Jeeps bounced through the open metal gates, tires vibrating over a cattle guard.

Once in the camp, the zombie mob drove them down and deposited them into the large barn. Inside, terrified groups of people scattered into the shadows at their arrival. One of the big barn doors slammed shut, and Dejah's body was thrown inside onto a pile of hay, like cast off garbage, before the other door was also closed. Abbott, Brooks, and Dr. Robbins collapsed onto the hard-packed, dirt floor of the barn, weeping from exhaustion and defeat.

Surrounded by the stares of the curious shadowed people, David crawled through the dirt and hay on bloodied hands and knees to Dejah's corpse. His body racked with sobs of despair, he gathered her in his arms. "Come back to me. Oh, G.o.d, Dejah, come back to me."

CHAPTER 39.

Coming back was never a good sensation. As soon as she regained consciousness, she became aware of a burning heat emanating from the marrow of her bones. Her muscles felt like they'd been ripped in the hardest workout of her life. It hurt to move anything. It hurt her to breathe. She felt the beat of her heart rus.h.i.+ng blood through newly formed veins and arteries like surging waves in her throat and skull. Besides the ache of freshly healed wounds and bones, there was a persistent longing inside of her. It was almost implacable. Perhaps hunger. Perhaps loss.

Dejah did a mental check of her faculties and touched her limbs. She rea.s.sured herself that she was indeed living again.

She awoke atop a pile of moldy blankets. The smell a.s.saulted her first, the scent of unwashed bodies, wet wood, hay, and the vile scent of decay. Someone had dragged her into a narrow horse stall to give her some privacy.

Dejah moaned, touching her neck. It was crusty with blood. The deeper wounds weren't completely healed.

"Dejah?" A man's voice. David's voice. It took her only a moment to place it, to search recent memory and sort out what had happened. David scrambled to her side. He'd been asleep, slumped in a corner with a US Army blanket pulled up to his shoulders. He let it drop as he rushed to her side. "Oh G.o.d," he whispered. "Dejah."

Suddenly about twenty people gathered in the entry to the stall. They were dirty and unkempt, but they were people: living, healthy, uninfected people. Dejah tried to sit, but exhaustion overtook her. Sensing, at least for the time being, her life wasn't in immediate jeopardy, her body refused to cooperate.

"Just lay down, no need to get up, everything's okay for right now," David said, smoothing her blood matted hair.

"She's alive!" someone said.

"Let her rest," an older woman said. "Show's over, everyone move away. Poor woman's been through enough already."

"Get her some water," said a man. "The rain cups are in the hole, hurry!"

She felt water over her lips, and opened her mouth. She drank too fast and choked. David gripped the back of her neck, supporting her head. She was able to take a couple of small swallows. There were whispers around her.

David washed her face with some of the water from the cup, clearing away the crusted blood and dirt. The water had a nearly instantaneous affect on her stamina, imbued her with new strength. Energy flowed through her arms and legs, her aching back, and strengthening neck.

Those around her gasped as Dejah sat up.

"The wound on your neck," a woman with greasy gray and black hair said in awe. "It just closed up. It looks like fresh, pink skin." She looked suspiciously at Dejah, her face was deep with the lines of hard living. She looked downright ugly as she glanced disapprovingly at David.

"Your wounds should've killed you," said a skinny man with a week's growth of beard. "I swear I just saw the wound on your neck close right up. You ... you should be dead. You were just a mangled corpse." The crowd came close, frightening Dejah. They reached out to touch her, clutching her shreds of clothes, touching her bare flesh.

She trembled, feeling a sense of vertigo at all the faces coming at her, the stifling shadows, the scents of the blankets and hay stirring around her, mingling with the pain. Blackness threatened to take her again. Her stomach swooned.

"David," she gasped, and then dropped out of consciousness again.

"Okay, back off, all of you. Let her rest." David pushed against the crowd ama.s.sed around the stall.

"What the h.e.l.l is up with her?" The ugly woman said, her tone harsh, voice raspy, like she'd smoked a million cigarettes in every bar between here and 1979.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you?" said David. It was his best response next to punching the b.i.t.c.h.

"Her name's Evelyn," offered a man from the back of the crowd. "And yes, she has the tact of a rhino in a china shop."

There were scattered chuckles among the crowd. Evelyn's dark eyes flashed at the people around her. If she were a wicked witch, no doubt the monkeys would be flying.

"She's injured," David said to Evelyn, trying to keep his temper in check. "Now go away and let her rest."

"Injured? Them weren't no injuries, pal. She was f.u.c.king eaten. She should be dead. What the h.e.l.l's going on here?"

He paused only a second. For the first time since he awoke, David noticed the patter of rainfall on the roof of the barn high above. "The injuries weren't as bad as they looked obviously. Just a lot of blood was all."

A young man with double chin and gla.s.ses had eyes that bugged and a head that tilted with disbelief. "Seriously, man? You know we all saw her when she came in. You didn't look too hopeful yourself. Evelyn's right; she looked dead."