Better Lucky than Good (Records of the Resistance) (3 page)

"There were other things broadcasted too Clay... Theories about how this all started..." Melanie began.
 

"Quiet!" Clay interrupted while she was in mid-sentence.
 

Darkness had entirely enveloped the road, and Clay was straining his eyes to see as he focused on the shoulder to their right. He was sure he had heard something. Up until this point, the road had been flanked on both sides by fields of soybeans. It had shifted now to standing corn, which stood taller than he and turned the narrow country road into a tight corridor.
 

"... I don't hear anything, Clay. Anyway, if we keep walking we can easily out pace whatever made the sound that you heard. If there are any infected in there, they'll be falling all over themselves just trying to move around." Melanie said as she gestured to the corn with an inverted finger.

Clay wasn't so sure. Without taking his eyes from the field edge where the sound had emanated from, he grabbed Melanie around her upper arm and pulled her away from the potential threat; placing himself between her and the sound. During the scuffling of feet against gravel, he couldn't be certain but believed he had heard additional movement from the crop. Clay mounted his shotgun but was quickly interrupted by the touch of Melanie's hand on his shoulder, before he could bring the muzzle to bear on the direction of the noise.

"No." she whispered.
 

"If they're out there, you'll only attract more. Its best that we just keep moving... Please Clay..." Melanie said, with an almost pleading tone.

Clay was getting the picture that she had been away from the group and their safe haven for too long. She was exhausted. The way her heels had been scraping against the gravel as they were walking had not gone unnoticed by Clay. He had actually been impressed by her fortitude. Her feet were cut and bruised from their shoeless travel. Melanie had informed him that she had lost a shoe trying to make her initial escape and found it harder to run with a single piece of footwear, than with none at all. Clay had given her a pair of flip-flops that he kept in his dry bag. But the fear, confusion, and longing for her group, had begun to wear on Melanie. She was ready to go home.

"You just finished telling me that the worst thing that could happen was being followed back to the farm house... I'm not going to be responsible for that." Clay's voice was insistent.
 

Clay removed his pack and instructed Melanie to turn around. He could tell that she wasn't even remotely impressed, but followed his instructions in face of the fact. He lifted the heavy bag onto her shoulders and spun her back around to face him.
 

"I'm going to give you the shotgun. If things get a little to close for comfort, I want you to undo these buckles, drop the pack, and run as fast as you can to the farm house with this gun." Clay instructed as he snapped together the buckles of the dry bag across Melanie's chest and waist.
 

Clay handed Melanie the shotgun. She received it awkwardly, like someone who had never dreamt of bearing a firearm. Then drawing his tomahawk from the leather loop on the pack, he turned to face the corn.
 

"Melanie, face the field on the other side of the road. Tell me if anything comes up behind us. Whatever it is that's in front of us is coming closer." Clay said forebodingly.
 

The movement in the corn was certainly coming closer. Clutching his tomahawk in his hand and still possessing his brass knuckles in his opposing fist, Clay prepared himself for the worst that the night could unleash at him.

Whatever was creating the noise, had seemingly stopped abruptly once it had reached the edge of the field directly in front of Clay. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins while his chest heaved deeply; his heart feeling like it would erupt through his shirt at any moment. Melanie however, was another story. She was doing all she could not to lose control of her bladder.
 

Clay thought he could hear his own heart beating, as it pumped hard in his chest in anticipation of the coming moments. The night was silent. The kind of night that seemed to allow any sound made, to travel forever. Not even the crickets were singing. The sky was free of clouds, leaving the stars and bright moon to illuminate the road around them. Clay stood his ground, peering into the black of the corn stalks.

The crop, which was less then ten feet in front of Clay exploded with movement. Between himself and the corn was a ditch and from it sprang a white tailed deer, shooting between himself and Melanie like it had been riding a rocket. It's hoofed feet thumping hard against the ground while kicking up gravel as it crossed the road.
 

Clay's shoulders slumped as he lowered his tomahawk to his side. Turning his head to look back at Melanie, he half expected to see only his pack lying there on the road where he had last seen her standing. To his surprise, there she stood with the shotgun lowered to her waist. Together, they both let out a sigh of relief. Clay smiled to her and was about to speak when the corn thrashed again. This time, instead of a deer, it released two infected men and a woman, all of whom were clambering through the corn. One of the men tripped while making his exit and fell clumsily into the ditch. The other, traversing the depression behind the woman, reached the edge of the road slightly on her heels.
 

"Watch the other field!" Clay said, speaking only loud enough to talk over the noise generated by the oncoming threats.
 

Clay flung himself towards the woman. Using his momentum to his great advantage over her unsure footing on the edge of the road, Clay drove his boot into her lower body; propelling her backward into the ditch and hard onto the already fallen man.
 

The infected behind her swung a stiff arm horizontally, as if it were a meaty club, towards the head of Clay. Ducking underneath of it, he delivered his tomahawk hard into the side of the man’s leg, just below the knee. The head of the weapon sunk home and buried deep into the bone before breaking the limb and sending him tumbling to the gravel. Out of his peripheral vision, Clay could see that the woman had successfully clambered up the ditch, and now stood directly beside him. Clay swung his tomahawk horizontally, hard across his body; the broad edge of the blade burying itself into her face just above the eye. She fell to her knees, the blade locking tightly into the bones of her face. His third opponent was only moments from cresting the ditch. Clay choked up on the handle just below the head of the tomahawk and slammed his boot into the woman's face, beneath the stuck blade. The tomahawk popped free, accompanied by a gruesome sound and releasing a splash of moon illuminated gore and blood into the air. The woman flopped backwards and slid partially into the ditch. The wet grass aided her upper body as it slithered down the incline. Her legs extended, but the friction between them and the gravel prevented her from sinking into the ditch completely. By the time Clay had regained his footing from freeing his tomahawk, the second man had set foot on the road. He twisted back his shoulders as if winding up to swing his arm out, giving Clay the opportunity to get inside of his potential attacker. Grabbing the man by the collar of his shirt and palming the head of his tomahawk, Clay began to deliver devastating punches to the man's face. With every punch, the blade drove deeper and deeper into the infected man's features. Clay could hear the cracking and crumpling of bone and flesh as he was being speckled with blood and chunks of tissue. The man struggled wildly against Clay's grip, even landing a few heavy blows of his own with his fists and forearms. The undead attacker could only stand Clay's fury for a moment and his knees soon buckled. Clay, releasing his grasp, stepped aside and let the man collapse to the ground; falling face first into the gravel. Blood began forming a pool around the fallen man's upper body and head, almost immediately after he had come to rest.
 

Clay snapped to, the moment he heard Melanie struggling. However, what he saw was the last thing that he had expected. Melanie, having dropped the dry bag, was standing over the first infected whose leg had been broken by Clay's tomahawk. He was struggling to stand upright, despite his limb being incapable of bearing his weight. Their remaining aggressor's attempts to regain his footing were being further impeded by Melanie's repeated strikes to the back of his skull with the butt of the shotgun.
 

Thunk, Thunk, Thunk!
 

His head snapped downward with every strike as he tried to posture up. Melanie's attacks were having little to no effect on her assailant, allowing the man to wrap one of his arms around her leg. It would be from this position that he would begin to use her limb to pull himself up from his hands and knees. Melanie began frantically hitting the man until the crack of Clay's tomahawk impacted into his skull, dropping him at her feet. She paused for a moment after he fell, staring down at the body that was finally absent of life. Clay gazed at Melanie from where he had thrown his tomahawk. From roughly ten feet away, the weapon had flipped end over end through the air until burying itself into its target.
 

The moonlight flooded the road, bathing the gruesome scene in an eerie light, and allowed for Clay to survey the arena and the results of their encounter. The woman whom had been the first to permanently fall, was partially obscured from view by the tall vegetation growing in the ditch. Only her legs were exposed in plain sight, which were now protruding out onto the road. The second to fall was the man laying face down at Clay's feet, who now laid in a pool of his own blood where the gravel met the grass. The third man who was also face down, lay at Melanie's feet with a tomahawk protruding from the top of his head. His arm still curled around Melanie's leg in a way that a passerby might mistake him as having begged for mercy in the moment before his death. Everything was quiet and still; at least for a moment. A moment which was short lived, as Melanie tore her leg from the grasp of the dead man and began to resume her attack. Her renewed rage was being further exacerbated by her emotions. The man's limp body jolted with the impact of every kick and strike from the gun stock. Clay slowly began his approach towards Melanie and as he did so, her anger began shifting toward tears. Clay placed his hand over the trigger guard of the shotgun while Melanie was in mid stroke. She tried to jerk the shotgun back from Clay's grasp but her arms no longer possessed the strength. The spent energy of her failed attempt at escaping the city, coupled with her adrenaline dump, had sapped away all of her energy.

"The gun has a rubber recoil pad... It doesn't make for much of a skull cracker." Clay gently explained.

Melanie finally released her grasp on the shotgun and slumped down onto the road, sobbing with her knees pulled into her chest.
 

"I knew him. He worked at the grocery store." she cried.

"He was a nice man... Those fucking assholes..." she continued to speak while trying to regain her composure.

Clay was taken aback by her statement.

"Those fucking assholes? Who?" he inquired.

"The ones who..." Melanie began to explain, but was interrupted by the echo of a gunshot in the distance. Then another, and another. The night which only a moment ago was entirely silent, began to light up with life in the form of a hail of gunfire.
 

"That sounds like it's coming from the farmhouse! Come on!" Melanie said, as she jumped to her feet and took off down the road as fast as her flip-flop adorned feet could carry her.

"Oh fuck... Melanie, WAIT!" Clay shouted, knowing full well that his request would go unheeded.

He picked up his dry bag and threw it over his shoulder. After jerking his tomahawk free from the dead man's skull and slipping it into its leather loop, he took off after Melanie. Although unable to overtake her, he was able to match her pace, even while loaded down as he was by the weight of his equipment. Melanie continued down the road until reaching a break in the cornfield to her right. There, was a long dirt road leading up a hill, which she struggled to negotiate in footwear more suited for the beach than for uneven terrain. Melanie continued determinedly up the hill until finally reaching its crest. The moment that she looked down onto the farm house, she was instantly reminded of the day the infected had started to turn, all over again. She could hear screams and gunfire. More gunfire and yelling. She could hear David's voice as he was desperately attempting to coordinate a defence. She was only a hundred yards away from the house, but she may as well have been in the midst of the battle. By the time that Clay had caught up to her, he was severely winded. However, even though catching his breath, he could still comprehend what was unfolding before his eyes. Clay straightened himself up and put a hand on Melanie's shoulder, whose own were covering her gaping mouth. Her breath quivered as she exhaled, while she struggled to stifle the urge to either scream in heart-broken agony or call out to her companions.
 

The side of the house to the left of the front door was burning on the second floor. Clay could see the reflection of the fire's light in the tears running down Melanie's face. It danced around, being exaggerated by the refraction as it penetrated the moisture. Clay could hear the screams of the defenders and see the muzzle flashes of their weapons as some of the infected fell. But wherever one dropped, another was there to fill its place in the offensive. The defenders simply couldn't reload fast enough to slow the approach of the horde. Foolishly, the survivors had devised a means to combat the undead with propelled flames. Seemingly, the act had done little more than transform the encroaching undead into flame inducing invaders. Inadvertently, they had set fire to the structure around them.