Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

I stared up at the blue sky. The sun was high, winking through the fringe of leafy green treetops. I blinked my eyes. My throat felt closed and my tongue seemed to fill my mouth – but for all that there was no pain. I felt numb, and there was a cold chill seeping through my veins. I turned my head and saw Jed striding across the freeway, gun swinging from his hand, his steps purposeful and determined.
His silhouette bounced and wavered and then he was standing over me, blocking out the sun with the broad of his back so that my face was cast in shadow.

I blinked again. My vision darkened, then came back. I licked my lips and tasted blood on my tongue. My skin felt like it was burning.

Jed’s shape wavered and then came back into focus. My vision began to blur and mist, and the silence was filled with a loud humming sound like a garden of angry bees.

I was laying flat on my back, arms out flung, the
Glock somehow still in my stiffened hand.

Jed glowered down at me. “I hope it
fuckin’ hurts!” he spat.

I opened my mouth to speak but the words were just an inaudible husky whisper. I could feel the ragged tear in my shirt, along the ridge of my pectoral muscle and welling blood oozing like treacle through my fingers.

Jed crouched down on his haunches. “Got something to say?” his voice was cruel. “Another death-bed confession?”

I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry, my lips felt thick and swollen. The taste of blood was stronger. I coughed, a spasm of pain that racked
me, and turned my head until I was staring into Jed’s brutal eyes.

“The girl?” I croaked.

“Which one?” Jed growled. “My wife you were screwing, my daughter you took from me – or the Vice President’s snotty little bitch?”

I closed my eyes as a sudden
lance of pain ripped through my chest like a stabbing red-hot poker. “Jessica.”

“She’s in the trunk,” he said. “The little bitch is a fireball. I had to slap he
r around to keep her quiet,” he admitted with rueful delight. “But she’s alive. She needs to be right? She’s my meal ticket out of this Hell and back to civilization.”

I felt a sick, helpless flutter of revulsion. “Civilization would be better off without you,” I rasped.

Jed’s temper flared. He pressed the gun against my forehead. I felt the steel of the barrel. It was warm. I felt the pressure of it against my skin. I took a shallow breath, and then my face twisted in the pain of sudden effort, as I summoned the very last reserves of my strength.

Jed
frowned down at me thoughtfully. Then he snatched the gun away from my forehead and leaned closer, pressing his face close to mine, so that his words were ragged and harsh and loud in my ear. “I’ve decided to let you bleed out,” he said maliciously. “I’m not giving you a quick death, fucker. You’re not worth another bullet. If the zombies don’t get you, the ants will – or the crows…”

He started to rise
, and as he got back to his haunches he realized too late that I had hefted the Glock in my out flung hand. I held my breath, groaned with the effort – and squeezed the trigger with the last trembling ounces of my strength. The bullet caught Jed in the side of his neck, and tore out through the other side of his head in a pink eruption of blood and a thunderous roar. The recoil slammed my hand back into the grass and then an instant later I saw my brother’s astonished lifeless eyes, as he toppled into the grass beside me.

He was d
ead.

* * *

I closed my eyes and lay still for a long time, feeling the waves of pain rippling through my chest, growing stronger and more violent until I was writhing through gritted teeth and a groan of agony was ripped from my throat.

Something nearby moved, padded away. I didn’t care.

Then I heard the growl and whine of a dog. I opened my eyes and rolled onto my side. The
German Shepherd was fifteen feet away, watching me hungrily from the line of the trees. Its eyes were fixed. Its mouth hung open, thick ropes of saliva drooling from its slack jaw. The dog snarled at me.

It looked sick. Its fur was hanging from its scrawny body in clumps, its legs stained in dry blood. It rocked its head from side to side and took a cautious step forward, slipping out of the shadowed woods and into the sunlight.

The animal stank; a putrid smell of rotting decay and death. It bared its teeth at me and they were yellow and wicked as razors.

I felt for the gun. It was still in my hand, but my arm was numb so that it dragged limp across the ground and I could not bring the weapon to
bare.

The
German Shepherd trotted in a wide wary circle around me, its eyes never leaving mine, until it was between my body and the freeway. I tried to shout, but my voice was nothing more than a weary croak. There was a froth of bubbles at the corner of my mouth. I heaved myself upright and screamed out in pain at the effort.

The
German Shepherd scampered away, then crept back until it was just ten feet away. It growled, and its eyes looked maddened with desperate hunger and starvation.

It
s long pink tongue lolled from the side of its mouth and then it suddenly sniffed harshly like it could taste the scent of my blood on the air. The dog’s head sank low on its shoulders and it took three bold paces towards my legs.

I tried to raise the gun, willed it to move, frowning with the intense desperate effort of concen
tration, but my arm hung heavy in the grass and would not move. I reached across myself and snatched up the Glock into my left hand. It was shaking and unsteady. The weapon wavered. I closed one eye to focus, but my vision flared into an explosion of white bursting light and I groaned in weakened pain.

I fired into the air and the dog fled across two lanes of the road, growling and yelping in confused terror, then turned back, suddenly more cautious, yet overcome by the ferocity of its hunger.

It slinked to the edge of the grass and went down on its haunches, creeping forward in stealthy inches. I raised the gun again in my left hand, but the weight of the weapon was impossibly heavy, my fingers slick with my own blood. I felt the gun slip from my grip and I could not pick it up again.

The
German Shepherd raised its head and we stared at each other across the small space. Its ears flattened against its head and it came up from the ground onto its haunches, tensed like a spring. The dog’s jaw hung slack – and then it lunged.

I screamed until the pain in my chest left me dizzy, yet made no sound louder than a ragged croak. The dog’s fierce teeth latched into flesh, just below the knee and it snarled ferocious and wide eyed with frenzy and madness. I beat my fist on the grass, but it was useless.

The German Shepherd clamped its jaws into fleshy muscle and began to drag at Jed’s dead body, worrying its teeth and rolling its head from side to side, growling and snarling.

In desperation and horror I reached across my body and picked up the
Glock in my right hand. I had no feeling – no sensation other than pain. The arm was heavy as lead and I had to hold it steady with my blood-covered left hand bracing the elbow.

I fired at the dog and hit
it in the rump. The animal shrieked in terrible pain and let go of Jed’s leg. It went over in the grass, thrashing and yelping. I fired again – a gut shot – and the terrible noise was cut off abruptly.

I looked about me dazedly. I was drenched in blood. It soaked through my shirt and welled in my lap. It mingled with Jed’s blood and that of the dog
, and soaked into the grassy earth.

Eventually the undead would come. Maybe it would take another hour – maybe another day. But I knew sooner or later one would pick up the scent and follow it to my body.

I stared up at the sky. Was this how it was meant to end?

Was I meant to
merely bleed to death in the dirt?

Was Jessica Steinman meant to suffocate in the trunk of a car?

Or was I meant to die trying?

I tucked the gun into the blood-soaked waistband of my jeans. I closed my eyes and dug down for every last scrap of streng
th. With a terrible pain-filled heave, I got to my knees. I felt myself trembling. I felt the agony of every ragged breath. I closed my eyes again and saw bright flashing lights of color. I bit down on my lip to stifle a scream, and heaved myself to my feet. My knees went from beneath me and I swayed perilously, like a drunken man.

“Jessica!” I called, the words
not more than a hoarse rasp across my throat. I lurched and staggered towards the freeway.

The sun beat down on me, and the singing in my ears rose to a deafening crescendo. I felt my blood, warm against my skin, as it spilled down my waist and left a crimson spattered trail across the burning blacktop.

I reached the wrecked Yukon and clutched at it to support my weight. I was slick with sweat and blood, and I heard myself making small mewing whimpering sounds as the tide of agony swept over me and crashed through my body in a torrent of pain. I looked over my shoulder, my eyes dazedly following the dipping freeway to where it flattened beneath the overpass, and to where I knew the off-ramp sign to Pentelle was, but the image wavered and rippled like I was peering through a heat-hazed mirage.

I turned m
y head slowly and looked to where the Taurus was wedged against the concrete barrier. It was fifty feet up a gentle slope to the crest of the rise, but it stretched before me like the peak of Everest.

I pushed myself away from the Yukon, took two tottering steps, and then got my balance. I staggered, clutc
hing at my chest like a man in the grips of a heart attack, while every effort and every pace cost me blood and strength.

I knew I couldn’t keep going.

I slumped to my knees and began to crawl.

When I reached the Taurus I was trembling like a man in fever. My skin burned
, my arm was stiff and limp. I fumbled for the trunk lever down by the driver’s seat and it was like trying to lift a mighty weight. I grimaced, felt my teeth bite through my bottom lip, and then I heard the soft echoing sound of the catch releasing. I rolled onto my back, panting with exhaustion, and let the waves of agony wash me away into the sweet oblivion of darkness.

* * *

“Get up! Jesus Christ, please get up!”

I tried to push the tugging hands away, unwilling to come back from the comfortable respite of unconsciousness, but the voice was strident and relentless, the hands that shook me desperate.

I opened my eyes. They were heavy, and felt crusted with grit. I blinked, and my head lolled to the side. I felt hands beneath my armpit
s, trying to lift me, and I groaned in pain until the piercing agony of being moved brought me to wakefulness.

Jessica Steinman’s face hovered over me, its edges blurred
. I blinked my eyes until they focused, and saw the deep fearful lines of panic cut into her brow.

Her face was swollen, and there was a livid red bruise on her cheek, already beginning to darken purple.

“Stay with me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t die on me.”

I was propped up against the side of the car, shaded from the sun by the wreckage of the truck. I flapped my hand feebly, and tried to tell her everything was all right. I wanted her to know that the pain wasn’t so bad any more. I wanted her to know that I had tried… but no sound came from my mouth.

“I’ve pressed the beacon,” Jessica said, holding up her arm and shaking the bracelet around her wrist. “I’ve been pressing it every few seconds for the past ten minutes,” her voice was fraught and pleading. “Just stay with me a little longer. There must be a helicopter on its way.”

I shook my head. It felt as heavy as a cannonball upon my shoulders. I took a shallow breath and licked my lips. My mouth was dry. “Stil
l twelve miles,” I said in a raw husky whisper. “Still too far…”

I saw her turn her head and stare for long seconds, as though maybe she heard a sound, or maybe she saw something. When she turned back to me her face was suddenly pale and grey as ash.

“Zombies?” I croaked.

She nodded, not trusting her voice. Her eyes were enormous, like she was on the edge of sheer terror.

“Where?”

“They’re… they’re back down the road, coming from the west,” she said.

“Coming this way?”

She nodded and trapped her lip between her teeth with
panic. “About a dozen of them.”

I groaned. I tried to heave myself upright but I didn’t have the strength. I coughed, and a splash of bright red blood trickled down my chin. “Go,” I wheezed. “Run for it.”

She shook her head vehemently. “No!”

I lay there panting in short shallow breaths through sickening waves of nausea and
moments where the darkness came and then receded again. My mind was numb, my thoughts confused and chittering. I frowned and tried to find a way…

“The car,” I said.