Crusade (Eden Book 2) (26 page)

Impulsively she leaned over and hugged him tight. At first his body was rigid but it quickly loosened in her embrace and he hugged her back, pressing her to him.

“I didn’t want—I didn’t want to just leave you out—”

“It’s okay. You
didn’t
, you didn’t. Be quiet. Just hold me, okay?”

They sat in the night clasped in each other’s arms. When they finally disengaged she sat back, her shoulder and arm pressed against him, and she became aware that she was wet, the whole front of her shirt and jeans. She brushed a hand over the wetness and smelled it, but couldn’t see what it was. Before she could turn the flashlight on Maurice spoke.

“I got bit.” In his voice was a resignation devoid of hope.

“Bit? Where?” She turned to face him and she was near hysterical.

“Lauren,
shhh
. Sit back down next to me, okay? Here, hold my hand. Please?”

Maurice had been bitten. Lauren didn’t want to think about it. She resumed her position at his side and clasped his hand in both of her own, sobbing silently.

They’d been resting for several minutes but, if anything, he was breathing heavier. He squeezed her hands and she squeezed his back.

“No,
listen
to me first, ‘aight?”

“You have to keep yourself safe, okay?” Maurice said. “But more than safe. You need to be happy, too? Right? Do you understand me?”

She let go of his hand long enough to wipe the tears off her face. Part of her felt selfish to be crying around him, knowing he was the one bit and dying. Part of her wanted to throw herself on him like a child and cling to him and tell him how she really felt for him and how things could have been different for them if only—

“
Happy
, right? Do you understand me?”

He said “over there” and she assumed he motioned but she couldn’t see anything in the dark. She let go of his hands and leaned forward on her hands and knees, feeling around for the machete, even turning the flashlight on briefly. While she did so Maurice stuck the barrel of his pistol in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.

“Mo—Maurice!” She scampered back to where he was and couldn’t talk. Her throat went hoarse. The voice gone from her, she hugged his limp body, vaguely aware of the pistol still clutched in his one hand.

A nearby growl in the dark made her sit up and take notice.

Zombies. Out there. With her. In the night. She rubbed the snot off her upper lip with the back of her wrist. She ran her hands up and down Maurice’s body, but it was a mechanical action now, bereft of any emotion. She unbuckled the utility belt he wore with extra magazines for his pistol and pulled it off his body. She found the machete he spoke of and pried the pistol from his dead fingers.

She shouldered his pack and took up her own rifle and left his body alone in the dark, the undead closing in. She bit her lower lip and didn’t look back.

The path was unmarked. As they trekked through countryside the snow was almost as high as their knees in places. A bitter wind blew wisps of white stuff in their faces, obscuring their vision.

They heard the first of the bookers before they saw it. The thing screeched at the top of its festering lungs, hidden from them by the falling snow. Mickey shouldered the USAS-12 and sighted, looking for a target.

The snow slowed the thing. As they watched it came at them in giant strides, like it was moving through molasses. It wore a neon rain slicker and stood out in the white. Suddenly it roared and changed paths, loping away from them, back in the direction they had come.

Gwen’s M16A4 fired once and the 5.56mm slug caught the booker above its ear, exiting the opposite side of its head. The echo of the shot reverberated as the body slouched to the powdery white.

“Damn.” Bear slung the mace over his back and drew the Glock with the green laser sight. “Come on.” He bent over and put his shoulder to Buddy’s hips, then stood with the big man and all his equipment draped over his shoulders.

“Bear, behind you!” Gwen screamed and he turned. Two bookers were making for him and Buddy. He extended the Glock and depressed the trigger slightly, the green laser sight lighting up on the chest of the closer of the two beasts. He corrected his aim and loosed three quick shots. The first undead dropped.

Mickey was discharging his shotgun on automatic up ahead. Gwen turned and saw half a dozen bookers streaming towards her, staying clear of Mickey and Julie. Though she did not comprehend why they ignored Mickey and Julie she was grateful they did so. Mickey managed to drop two of them as they passed. Gwen concentrated on the remaining four, sighting through the snowfall, shooting, missing, shooting again. A zombie head jerked back. The thing landed on its face in the fresh powder.

Bear stood beside her with Buddy on his shoulder and fired his Glock, as she blasted another zombie with the M16.

“I’m out,” he said, dropping the clip from the Glock then reloading, the task made all the more difficult with Buddy on his shoulder.

Gwen dispatched the last of the charging zombies.

Julie screamed something at them. He squinted at her through the falling snow. She was shouting—“Look out!”—and when he turned to look behind them the zombie hit him head-on, knocking him to the snow. Buddy flopped off to the side, nearly catatonic, helpless.

“Bear!” Gwen fired the M16 as the bookers descended, emptying the final rounds of her magazine in the chest and head of the nearest. Then she was also born to the ground by two of the things clawing and snapping at her.

The zombie on top of Bear cracked open its mouth mere inches from his face and the fetid stench that roiled out of it was nearly overwhelming. He jammed the Glock in the things’ maw and it bit down on the locked open barrel. He made a fist and his gloved hand punched the grip of the pistol, ramming it through the creature’s head, the barrel rupturing out of the back of the thing’s neck. It crumpled and he rolled over in the snow. Shadowy streaks showed in the snowfall as more bookers charged them.

He reached out and grabbed the foot of one of the things that had knocked Gwen down and pulled it towards him. The undead let go of the woman, shrieked and twisted and sat up, intent on munching on Bear now, but he punched it in the face, stunning the beast. While it blinked and its mouth hung open, he reached his gloved hand in and ripped the jaw off its face.

“Fucker—motherfucker!”

Gwen stabbed the zombie she wrestled with repeatedly. Unlike a human being the thing did not try and protect itself. It kept reaching for her and its groping hands absorbed several of her knife blows. Finally she managed to stab it through the forehead and it stopped struggling.

There was a sputter and a roaring buzz. She looked up and Bear stood with his chainsaw. He looked something fierce. As she watched he raised the chainsaw above his head and bellowed at the zombies hurtling towards them. As he brought the saw down on the nearest booker, she found her M16A4 and quickly reloaded. She pulled back the bolt and chambered a round then started picking off targets.

Buddy laid in the snow near her feet.

Bear buried the blade of his chainsaw in the head of a zombie, forcing it down. The saw’s roar muffled, a mist of red filled the air. The zombie’s hands shot up spastically like a marionette’s then dropped to its sides as he yanked his saw free and swung it horizontally. There was a sheer of sparks and then red as it cut through another monster’s skull.

She fired, felling a zombie. As the head of a zombie next to her disintegrated in a scarlet spray she felt like she had been punched in the shoulder. She was knocked off her feet for a second time.

“Shit.” She scrambled to a seated position despite the fact her right arm wasn’t responding. She drew her pistol with her left hand and tried to figure out how she could take the safety off with one hand.

She realized what had happened. Mickey had blown the head off the zombie next to her. Some of the buckshot had caught her, enough to knock her off her feet.

“Mickey, shut up. I’ll kick your ass later. Help me up.”

“You get her,” Bear said. “I got Buddy.”

It was slow going through the snow and the path wasn’t clear. As they walked Mickey tied his belt around her upper arm and pulled it tight.

There were faint groans and protests around them, but visibility was limited in the falling snow. Zombies were out there, the slow moving ones.