Afterbirth (14 page)

The generator noise called down the horde from the juvenile detention center. Thirty or so infected teenagers shambled out of the surrounding woods. Snapping branches in the distance heralded the coming of more.

“Look out!” Scott knelt on the lid of a dumpster and aimed at the dark-haired, infected girl heading for Michael. Long dreds of matted hair hung in front of her sallow face and her opaque, white eyes appeared devoid of thought or life. Her whole body jerked back and forth as she tried to run with her right knee broken and bent outward.

Michael spun around and grabbed the girl’s hair. He thrust his long knife blade into her neck and pulled until she was nearly decapitated. A sharp twist broke her spinal column and her body collapsed at his feet. He let go of the head and wiped his hands on his blood-spattered pants.

“Where’s Miranda?” Scott jumped down from his perch.

“She’s fine. She’s locked in an exam room. Help me get the gate.”

Scott’s fear for her safety propelled him forward.

“Hurry!” Earl’s muscles strained the fabric of his white, cotton t-shirt as he shoved the chain link gate against a dozen infected. Randy fired off several rounds with his rifle, taking out the infected closest to Earl.

Michael beat Scott to the gate. He wedged his steel-toed boot against its base and grabbed the dangling chain with one hand. He held his knife tight in the other. “Get back!” He stabbed a late-teens boy through the center of his forehead. The bone crunched as he twisted the blade and then pulled it free. The boy’s body fell and the others climbed over it, undeterred. The gate rattled and threatened to collapse as the gunshot drew more of the undead delinquents.

“Stop shooting!” Michael reached for the padlock hanging on the fence. His shaking hand knocked it to the ground.

Scott tried to get the lock and one of the undead grabbed his wrist from under the gate. The infected boy’s hand was icy, his flesh thin to the bone. Scott tried to move, to scream, but all he could think of was leaving Miranda, alone and pregnant.

Randy raced down the ladder and across the lawn. Earl forced the horde back, holding the security chain and slamming his body against the fence repeatedly. Michael brought down the heel of his boot on the hand holding Scott’s wrist and it snapped. “Pull it together!” he shouted in a drill sergeant tone.

Scott handed Michael the lock, which he promptly ran through the chain and fastened.

The horde kept coming. A wall of fingers and hands formed through the grate of the chain link fence, the smaller hands coming through up to their forearms.

Scott drew his pistol and fired blindly, aiming at head height. Several bodies dropped, but there were too many, even with Randy and Earl taking up arms alongside of him.

Michael waved his hands for the shooting to stop. “We can’t do this. There are too many of them and not enough ammo.”

“Think we can wait them out?” Scott asked.

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know, but we need time to come up with a plan. Come on.” He ran into the clinic with the others not far behind.

The fence rattled loud enough to be heard after the front door of Michael’s office slammed shut and was barricaded.

Scott followed Michael down the hall to the closed examination room Miranda was holed up in.

Michael knocked. “Miranda, open the door.”

She didn’t answer, but Scott could hear her crying. “Come on, honey. Open up.” He looked at Michael. “Something’s wrong.”

“Miranda, come on. Unlock the door.” Michael said again.

Scott waved his arms, shooing the others away. “Move.” Earl, Randy, and Michael backed up. “Miranda, get away from the door. I’m coming in.” Scott aimed his kick so that it landed right beneath the doorknob. There was a loud
crack
, but the door didn’t open. He let out a frustrated growl and kicked it again, trying to hit the same spot. The jamb splintered and the door flew open, smashing into the cabinets behind it.

* * * * *

A loud crack echoed as the door busted inward.

Miranda could hear Scott screaming her name, but she was in too much pain to answer. The dirty, tile floor cooled her sweaty cheek and kept her mind off the hot flash coursing through her. She pulled her knees as far toward her chest as she could and tried to ignore the warm wetness beneath her.

Scott got down on his knees next to her and brushed her dark hair away from her face. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Her ears rang from the noisy shots and the baby tossed inside of her. She swallowed and tightened her arms around her engorged belly. “Contractions,” she whispered.

Scott set his hand on the floor near her and quickly pulled it away. Liquid dripped from his fingers. “Michael, get over here.”

“We have to get her on her back.” Michael said. “I can’t tell what’s going on without examining her.”

“No, please.” Miranda protested weakly.

Scott rolled her onto her back and cradled her head in his lap. “You have to trust him.”

Michael struggled to help her undress. “I have to see if your water has broken, Miranda.”

She pulled her knees tight together in protest of Michael’s prying. “It’s not my water,” she said. “It was an accident.” She lowered her head, embarrassed. The pressure of the baby’s weight on her bladder made her incontinent, a fact she’d managed to keep hidden from Scott until now.

Michael smelled his wet hand.

“I’m telling the truth,” Miranda said, breathing through the last of the pain. Just having Scott with her was calming enough that the stress-induced contractions stopped. Michael rinsed his hands under the faucet and sighed. “Did you tell him she’s all right?” She looked up at Scott and managed a weak smile.

Scott’s eyes teared up. “The baby is a girl?”

Michael nodded. “A healthy, normal little girl. Earl, can you and Randy check to see how the gate’s holding up?” He waited for them to leave before continuing. “Listen, when you asked what I knew about Nixon’s research, I was telling the truth. I didn’t know what I know now. Going through Miranda’s chart, I can see what Nixon thought would happen with this pregnancy and I’m not entirely sure he’s wrong. Miranda’s genetic deficiency offset the virus, prevented it from taking over the fetus which is, essentially, human.”

“Essentially?” Miranda didn’t like the connotation.

“Blood doesn’t pass between the mother and the fetus during delivery except for in rare cases, but it can happen. If I’m right and the virus exists, even latent, in the baby… Miranda’s only a carrier for the deficient gene. She’s not immune to the virus.”

Michael had Scott’s attention. “So, what are you saying?” Miranda felt his muscles tense as he shifted her position.

“I’m saying there’s a possibility Miranda can be infected during delivery.”

Miranda pushed herself up so that she was sitting. A heavy ache spread through her groin and her eyes filled with tears. “Can’t you do something?” Scott helped her to her feet and she found herself eye-to-eye with Michael, who was bent over with his head hung low.

“There’s one thing, but…” Michael loaded up a medical kit with supplies from the exam room.

“But what?” Scott snapped.

Randy appeared in the doorway, red-faced and sweating. “We have to go. The gate’s almost down.”

“But what?” Miranda asked.

“It means going back to Strandville.”

Alone in the woods, guilt-ridden and dying, it had taken everything Allison had to leave Ben behind. Whatever had happened to him was like something out of a horror movie, and though she was glad to be free, it had come at too great a cost.

The cold and wet made it almost impossible to walk. The frostbite on her toes had advanced and the pins and needles sensation bordered on unbearable. She rubbed her hands together to make heat from friction and applied them to her bare, blackening skin. Her feet were numb and she could hardly feel her hands against them. She left the wet slipper socks off, certain the moisture was doing more harm than good, and continued to search for someplace to die in peace and with dignity. A strong breeze blew through the alley of thin and bare trees, and she took shelter against one of the few with the girth enough to shield her. She slid down the coarse bark, which scraped her back through the thin cotton shirt, and closed her eyes.

“You have to keep moving.” She rolled onto her hands and knees. The lead-weight of her limbs, weakened by long-term illness and fluctuating treatments, made it hard to stand, but she managed. She took a thick, broken branch off the forest floor to help her walk. Each step hurt more than the last. Her fever returned and when she saw the red, hiker’s backpack, she was certain it was a hallucination.

“Hello?” She called out and her voice returned in echo.

Leaves rustled and she listened, the sound seemingly all around her.

“Hello, is someone out there?”

She stumbled ahead, the walking stick bending under her slight weight, but not breaking.

“Does anyone hear me?”

Up ahead through the trees, several yellow rain slickers came into view. The people wearing them were hunched over, two of the five of them with large hiking packs strapped to their backs.

“Hello?”

None of them responded.

She moved closer and the gnashing of teeth locked her in place.

A young doe convulsed on a bed of brown leaves at the feet of a group of hikers who picked it over like carrion birds.

The smallest of the group, a young boy wearing full rain gear and with his hood up, was the first to lift his head. Fur and flesh dripped from his teeth and blood smeared his small chin. His eyes, two white orbs sunk deep into his emaciated face, stared blankly in her direction.

She covered her mouth to stifle her scream and took a step back. The crunching leaves under her bare feet caught a woman’s attention. She snapped her head around and her white eyes, the same as the boy’s and Ben’s, locked immediately on Allison.

“Help!” Allison ran, despite her pain and the numbness in her feet. Her heart raced, and though she wanted to collapse, this run was for her life. “Help!” Even if it were one of Nixon’s men who heard her, she welcomed the rescue.

The group of five moved in a hunting pack that, while not fast, was undeterred by the rugged landscape.

Allison looked over her shoulder at the approaching family of hikers shuffling through the leaves with their arms outstretched and bloody mouths open. Their uneven gaits had them teetering as they attempted to run and she could see, as they stumbled and recovered, that they were driven to close the distance.

Behind them, the deer somehow pulled through. It struggled to its feet, a window to its organs chewed through its fur, and ran despite its injury. Only when it circled back, lapping Allison and the others, had she noticed its eyes, too, were white.

“Help!”

“Allison?”

Part of her believed that it was the fever deluding her, but she played along. If she died hallucinating Zach holding her, it was all the peace she needed.

“Zach? Help.”

She heard his footsteps, but didn’t immediately see him.

“Allison, where are you?”

She couldn’t believe he was there. “Over here.”

The adult male of the group had gained ground and was close enough for her to smell the rot on him.

“Help.”

Zach came around like a blur, the sun gleaming off the blade of a hatchet lifted it over his head. “Watch out!”

He buried the blade deep into the man’s skull and twisted. The bone split apart and brain spilled from the wound.

Zach reached down and unsheathed the knife strapped to his leg. “Here, take this.”

Allison held the heavy hunting knife firmly in her hand.

“If any of them get near you, go for the head!”

The four remaining members of the pack, the woman and three children, continued their chase.

Zach choked up on the wooden hatchet and swung at the eldest boy’s neck. The blade crunched when it hit his spinal column and his gangly body dropped. A pool of blood spilled from the wound and still, he tried to stand up. Zach quickly recovered his blade and delivered the killing blow.

He dispatched the mother next, splitting her head as he had the father’s, but not before the smallest of the group, the boy who was the first to see Allison, made his way to her.

He growled and showed his bloody teeth, but the closer he got, the less interested he seemed.

Allison held her breath, the rotten smell rolling off the boy making her nausea worse.

The boy whiffed the air in her direction, and then Zach’s.

She tried to keep steady, but her leg muscles burned, and the shivering nearly brought her to her knees. She couldn’t run, not even for her life, and as she lifted the blade, her heart racing, the boy took off darting in Zach’s direction.

“Zach!”

A gunshot rang through the woods and the young boy dropped. Blood gushed from a perfectly round wound in his forehead. Another shot and the last of the pack went down. Allison gasped, checking, first to see if Zach was hurt, and then looking for the shooter.

“Allison, are you all right?” Zach ran toward her, his green eyes electric through the sweat-streaked camouflage paint on his face. “Oh God, no.” A pained expression crossed his face and she could see his anguish even with her blurred vision.

Her legs gave out and she collapsed into a shivering pile on the forest floor, narrowly missing the blade of the knife, which fell from her hand on the ground under her.

Zach ripped off his back pack and tore open the wrapper of the silver blanket which he promptly wrapped around her. “Please, no.” He held her close, rocking her against his broad chest. She let her eyelids close, savoring for a brief moment the warmth and comfort of being back in the arms of the man she loved. He held his lips to her forehead and smoothed her hair back from her face. “I won’t let this take you,” he whispered, sniffling.

She opened her eyes and saw three men standing over them. One of them was Max Reid.

“Sometimes,” Reid said, “You don’t get a choice.”