Dead Hunt, page 11
“Michael?” she repeated.
“Listen, this is important!” he said cutting her off. “Cut into the woods but keep close to the road. As soon as you get around them, go back on the road and run until you are far enough ahead of them. Do you understand?”
“Michael, I…”
“Do you understand?”
“No! No I don’t understand why you are telling me this. Aren’t you coming with me?”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? I can’t do this by myself. Michael, I need you to…”
“You can do this!” he ordered. “You have to do this!”
She started to cry.
“Lucy, you have to get off this mountain and warn people.”
“Come with me, Michael!” she pleaded
“I can’t go with you, Lucy.”
“Why not?”
Michael didn’t say anything at first; he just held up his hand and pulled back his sleeve revealing a bite mark on his forearm.
“I, I don’t understand,” Lucy sobbed.
“Yes, you do.” Michael forced a smile. “Have you ever watched a zombie movie?”
Lucy looked at him, confused.
“What happens when a zombie bites you?” he asked.
Her eyes opened in horror.
“You don’t know that!” she pleaded, but his index finger touched her lips, and she stopped talking.
“We don’t know that it won’t,” he explained. “And I can’t be around you if it does.”
Lucy looked outside, then back to Michael, tears now running freely down her cheeks. “What are you going to do, Michael?”
Michael looked around the attic and laughed, “I was thinking about maybe putting a hot tub over there…”
Lucy punched him in the arm. “That’s not funny!” she said with teary eyes.
“I’m going to do the one thing I always wanted to do,” he said, the smile now gone from his lips.
“And what’s that?” she sobbed.
“This,” he leaned towards her and kissed her gently on the lips.
Her eyes stared at him for the briefest of moments then slowly closed.
No more words were said after that; there was nothing more to say.
Lucy hugged Michael tightly in silent protest, but he pulled her arms away and without saying a word, begged her to leave so she could survive. There are times in people’s lives when words are not needed. If only people could communicate that well when their lives were not in danger.
They both knew what had to be done. She had to leave; he had to stay. They had already said their goodbyes.
Lucy climbed out of the hole, and Michael eased her down to the ledge below. Her tears were flowing heavy when she rolled on the ground and looked up to Michael.
His eyes filled with tears as he watched the girl he always loved leave that God-forsaken place and run towards safety.
“Be safe,” he whispered as she disappeared around the bend.
Lucy ran from the lab and down the steep road. She wanted to put some distance between her and the zombies. At least, that’s what she was trying to tell herself. The truth was, she just kept going because she didn’t know what else to do. She knew, if she stopped running away from the house, she just might turn around and run back to it, back to Michael. She’d been on the move for over twenty minutes when she saw more of those zombie things coming up the road towards her. She tried to remember what Michael had said, but it was all a blur. The only thing she could remember was his gentle kiss.
“Focus,” she commanded her brain. “What did he say about the woods?”
Her mind raced back over the events. She still could not concentrate, and the new mob of zombies was getting close. Not knowing what else to do, she turned and ran into the woods.
Night came much faster in the trees. She was gasping for air. Her small feet pounded in the grassy forest bed, snapping tiny twigs as she ran deeper into the impossibly dark forest. The quick snapping of twigs below her feet contrasted with the slow, heavy thuds of the dozen zombie things that methodically pursued her.
Where was the road? If only she could find it. She needed to get out of the dense bushes and back onto the road. The laces of her running shoe snagged a low-lying branch and yanked her hard to the ground. Her panicked scream filled the night air as she violently kicked at imaginary hands.
Her mind raced in fear as she kicked viciously at the empty air. It took her a moment to realize that nothing had grabbed her. She started moving once more and… tripped again. Blindly, she felt the ground for the machete and her bottle of water, and grasping them tightly, she climbed back to her feet, gulping in air. She was moving as fast as she could move in the dense brush, and they were gaining on her.
“They’re not tripping in the dark,” Lucy thought out loud.
She took a few more breaths to calm herself. Straying this far off the road had not been such a great idea. Taking another deep breath, she forced herself not to run and walked as fast as her tired legs could carry her. She felt twigs digging into her left foot.
“Shit!” she cursed in a frustrated voice.
Her shoe had come off. She quickly looked behind her but could see nothing. It was so dark. She could hear them coming.
“Fuck the shoe!” she said defiantly.
Prickly branches continued to slap at her tender skin; others pulled at her hair. She tripped over a fallen log and landed heavily on a large rock. It slammed into her chest with a vengeance. She tried to shriek in agony, but no sound passed her lips. The wind thoroughly knocked out of her, she protested in silence. Tears streaked her face. Panic engulfed her, followed by a feeling of complete helplessness. With no other response available from her exasperated brain, she curled up in a fetal position and began to sob like a small child
The sounds behind her moved closer, and she could hear their groans. She didn’t care anymore. Her lungs burned and her body shivered in the chilly night air. Her chest throbbed and her legs ached. She couldn’t run any further. She was beat. She painfully rolled to her back on the cold mossy carpet of the forest floor and stared up at a million tiny lights. How pretty the stars looked. How peaceful and serene.
Lucy screamed in horror as a putrefied hand reached down to grab her. Her mind snapped back into action and her body followed, refusing to die on this God-forsaken mountain. She screamed once more and kicked ferociously to escape the grabbing hands. She scrambled to her feet and then swung her giant knife. The sheathed blade bounced harmlessly off the zombies head. Lucy flung the sheath to the ground and swung the knife in a giant arc. The zombie creature never made a sound as its hands were severed at the wrists and dropped to the ground, motionless. Lucy snapped her leg forward, kicking the zombie. She swung the giant knife at its head. She missed the head, but the blade found its mark deep in the zombie’s throat. Blackish-red blood oozed from the deep cut as she yanked the blade free. She took a mighty, Babe Ruth swing as the zombie moved forward and collapsed. The blade missed the crumbled zombie, the force of her mighty swing flung her around like a child’s spin toy. She crashed to the mountain floor, her eyes staring up at the multitude of stars once again.
“Get up!” she heard Michael’s voice yell at her.
She sprung to her feet like a cat, her head jerking from side to side.
“Get moving!” she heard him again.
It was then that she realized the voice was only in her head.
“I think I’m losing my mind,” she said, but the voice of Michael ignored her. She heard bushes rustling. She didn’t need voices to tell her to get her ass out of there. She hastened her pace, hoping, praying, that she could keep from tripping, when she felt something hard under her foot. It took a few more steps to fully comprehend that the soft, springy floor of the mossy mountainside had turned to a hard, flat surface. She smiled triumphantly. She’d found the road.
With sunrise still a distance away, Lucy felt her way down the mountain road, her feet and hands warning her when she threatened to leave the road. It was a long, slow battle staying on the road, and the moonless night offered no help. Rocks were cutting into her foot, and it hurt like hell, but she limped forward.
She walked for hours, trying to ignore the chilly air and pushing past the pain of sharp rocks digging into her shoeless foot.
She struggled forward, and morning finally broke.
CHAPTER 14 – The Van
Lucy quickly rummaged through the bags trying not to look at Wade’s corpse. She found a bottle of water and took a long drink. It was disgustingly warm, almost hot, but it quenched her agonizing thirst. She poured some over her head as if trying to wash away the stench, then took another long, powerful gulp.
The water trickled down her face like tears, but she didn't have time to cry. She wanted to, she just didn't have time. She rifled through some more bags and found a pair of running shoes, socks, a t-shirt and more of the sun-roasted water. She grabbed her cache then stepped outside to escape the stench that burned in her nostrils.
Lucy lowered herself to the ground and gritted her teeth in pain as she peeled the blood-soaked sock from her battered foot. She took a deep breath and poured water over her wounds. Without taking the time to let the pain subside, she used one of the socks as a makeshift bandage to wrap her battered and blistered foot.
She picked up her trusted machete, and her lightly-freckled nose crinkled as she gave the mob a defiant stare. Empty, emotionless eyes stared back at her. The corner of Lucy's lip curled in disgust as she turned her back to them and started to jog.
Pain shot through her foot with a jolt, and her thighs begged for mercy. She had only taken a few steps before slowing to a fast walk. She may have been an athlete, but all this running around and lack of sleep was taking its toll on her petite body. That’s when she heard it. Her heart jumped in disbelief. It couldn’t be. She listened intently. There it was again; a ringing sound.
“My cell phone!” Lucy cried out excitedly as she spun around towards the van. In her desperation to find water her exhausted mind had completely forgotten that her cell phone sat waiting in the side pocket of her duffle bag. And, it was ringing! That meant there was a signal. That meant she could call for help! She was rescued!
Lucy took a few excited steps towards the van, ignoring her screaming foot, then froze in her tracks. Her heart sank.
Rescue was not within her grasp. Something stood between her and rescue: the zombies.
They had already reached the van. Most of them just staggered past it towards Lucy, but a few stragglers still hung around the vehicle, attracted to the stench of death. Lucy slowly walked backwards, her eyes darting side to side taking in her surroundings as her exhausted mind raced through possibilities.
“Double-back through the woods,” she thought excitedly. “No, that won’t work,” she corrected herself. “The zombies in the van might not leave, and then I’ll be surrounded.”
Her hand clenched the machete handle. “Kill the fuckers. Kill every last one of them!”
“There’s too many,” the other side of her brain told her. A war raged inside her mind: her emotions and intellect battled for dominance.
Intellect won.
It was hopeless. Help was perhaps just a phone call away, but it was a call she was not going to be making. A loud crack jolted her mind back to the task at hand. She looked from side to side for the source of the sound but saw nothing. She felt something tapping the top of her head. She looked up as tiny droplets of water kissed her face. The intensity increased abruptly as a heavy rain blew in. Moments later she was as wet as a trout.
She laughed sardonically. “Figures.”
And, like so many times before, Lucy turned her back on the approaching mob and walked away, leaving her cell phone, and her last hope of rescue, behind.
Her laughter turned to sobs which shook her body. Tears flowed hot down her cheeks and melded with the cold rain. Her mind raced through recent memories, memories of her friends, of their happy, smiling faces. Those visions were replaced with the horror of watching those same faces screaming as their young flesh was being ripped apart by monsters.
She limped forward in the chilling downpour, her determination resolute. She was getting off this mountain.
CHAPTER 15 – Crossroads
She walked on and on and had no way of knowing exactly how long she had been moving but knew it must have been at least a few hours. The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, nothing more than a brief sun shower. Lucy thought God must be mocking her, as the summer heat had returned in all its blistering glory. Her foot didn’t hurt as much, or perhaps it had just gone completely numb. Lucy wasn’t quite sure which, but at least the pain had subsided a little.
“With my luck, I’ll get gangrene and they’ll have to amputate,” Lucy said to the quiet trees.
The last thing she needed was to give her exasperated self something else to worry about, but that new thought played on her mind.
“I can see the headlines now. Cheerleader with one foot, story at eleven,” she chuckled to herself.
“I must be going crazy. I’m laughing about cutting my foot off. I wonder what time it is?”
Lucy was not some outdoorsman who could tell the time by looking at the position of the sun. She was a cheerleader, not Davy Crockett.
“That’s why people wear watches and carry cell phones,” she thought, neither of which she had at the moment.
“My cell phone,” she said to the still quiet trees, “I miss my pink Blackberry.”
She knew that if she had the damned thing she would know the time. She could even listen to some music to occupy her mind to avoid thinking about gangrene and amputating her foot. Hell, she could call for help.
“Help would be good,” she said to the trees, but they didn’t answer her.
“Why hasn’t anyone come for me?” she questioned silently, “Didn’t my parents wonder where in the hell I was when I didn’t return home from the competition? Why didn’t my over-protective father send out the entire Glace Bay Police Department and half the RCMP to come find his daddy’s little girl? Where in the hell is everybody?”
Lucy couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d passed her cabin. She hadn’t gone in, figuring there was no point; there was nothing there and, thanks to Wade, she couldn’t even lock the door.
“Poor Wade,” she thought as images of his shattered face crept back into her memory. “At least he didn’t have to live through this horror.”
When Lucy breached the top of a blind crest, the road ended at a stop sign. The Seal Island Bridge was to the left, Cheticamp was to the right. The bridge was closed, and, if that cop wasn’t there, that meant a dead end. She could try to swim across the channel, but the way the current ran in and out from the Atlantic Ocean that wasn’t much of a choice. She might be pulled under and swept out to sea. She hadn’t come this far to drown.
Cheticamp was more or less the same distance away, but there was no way of knowing if anyone was there either.
If Michael’s theory was right and the problem started because something in that lab infected the water, then either direction should be protected by the mountains that surrounded Margaree.
“Water runs downhill, not up and over the next mountain,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “So both directions have about the same chances of being safe.”
Safe was such a relative term these days.
Kelly’s Mountain and Hunter’s Mountain would be hell to walk over, and Lucy was sick of mountains. The road to Cheticamp weaved through the valley and around the base of a mountain, then ran up along the coast.
“Cheticamp it is,” she announced to no one as she turned right but did not take a step.
“Distraction,” she announced with a smile. “Michael said something back at the lab about distracting them with smell.”
She looked at the road behind her as the zombies approached the foot of the blind crest.
“Let’s see if you fuckers are as dumb as you are ugly,” she said coldly.
She pulled off her sneaker and peeled the blood soaked sock bandage from her foot. The cuts had closed over and stopped bleeding. She winced in pain as she stomped her bare foot hard on the pavement, then hobbled down the road to the left. The road slapped and poked her tender foot without mercy as blood trickled, then poured, onto the hot pavement. She kept walking; more bloody footprints, more pain. She wiped some blood away with the sock and tossed it down the road, but it did not go very far. She tore off a piece of her shirt, sopped up some more blood and then wrapped it around a rock. She threw it as far as she could, but it didn’t go very far either.
“Jimmy Fastball Williams you’re not,” she said with a small laugh as she tore another piece of her shirt, soaked up some more blood and wrapped it around another rock.
She wound up like the baseball pitchers she’d watched on TV and let it fly. It passed her last attempt by only a few yards.
“Yep, you throw like a girl,” she muttered as she looked towards the zombies. They were getting close. Lucy hoped Michael had been right about their sight too.
She quickly tore one more strip off her shirt, which now barely covered her breasts, wrapped her foot again, shoved it back into her shoe and ran to the right.
Her plan was simple. If the zombies took the bait they would be walking away from her instead of constantly being on her ass. When she was a far enough distance away, she ducked into the trees to catch her breath and wait.
Time seemed to stand still. Then she saw it, the first one, the big one that was always ahead of the others, leading them forward. She didn’t think they were smart enough to have a leader. He probably just had longer legs, so that put him in front of everyone else. He stopped at the crossroads as the others came up behind him. Seconds ticked. She held her breath.
