Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (38 page)

“ERIC,”
He
heard Michelle scream through his headset that still miraculously clung to his
ears.

He rolled away from the collapsed roof and struggled
to his feet, catching a fuzzy glimpse of Michelle fighting against her harness
for a better angle. Even in his disoriented state, he recognized that her rapid
firing was being fueled by emotion.

“’Chelle . . .”
he coughed out along with a puff of leaf dust,
“aim . . . breathe.”

His head was clearing a little as the stun from the
collision with the tree wore off, and he managed to ready the shotgun as he
stumbled toward the truck. Bullets were zinging over his head and to both sides
as Michelle fired at his pursuers.

“Sam, get in the truck,”
she yelled as she dropped a magazine out of the rifle
and slammed another one home.
“This is my last reload! Eric, hurry up . . .
RUN!”

The burst of adrenaline at her warning pushed him
forward the last few yards and he dove into the bed of the trailer, spinning in
the air and firing multiple times as he crashed onto the wooden slatted bed. Any
effect his shots may have had on the pursuing horde was lost to him as Sam
gunned the engine, bouncing Eric twice against the side wall. The Explorer shot
forward down Golden Eagle Loop for less than five seconds before Sam hit the
brakes and swore.

“Shit . . . hold on,”
he barked out as the SUV lurched forward again,
swerving around another mob of infected that had appeared on the road next to
an abandon travel trailer. His new course took them off the road and through
the lightly wooded area that separated the loops. Michelle’s truck heaved and
pitched over the bumpy terrain as Sam searched for a way out of the campground,
but the path of least resistance was steering him further and further toward
the lake. The jolting in the utility trailer was intense, and Eric’s attempt to
pull the last four shells out of the caddy resulted in a loss of three of them.
Only one made it into the M2’s gate.

At that moment, Crowbar Mike’s voice, tinged with
panic, came over their radios.
“I’ve got a flag . . . Repeat . . . I’ve got
a flag being waived by a kid. He’s running this way along the shore. Do you
copy?”

Eric managed to brace himself in a sitting position as
the pursuing pack of ghouls spread out through the wooded ground, their paths following
curved lines to track the Explorer as it veered away down the gradual slope
towards the water. A glance to his right showed that several more infected had
appeared at the top of Blue Heron Loop, and were also trotting towards them on
an intercept course. Mike’s call repeated with greater urgency, and Eric fired
twice more, emptying the shotgun and slinging it before he answered.

“Mike, move the boat toward the pier right now, but
stay a little off to the side, understand?”

“I’m almost there right now.”

“Stay there, but not directly off the end . . . We’re
on the way.”

Through his headset, Sam’s droll undertone came
through.
“I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

Bracing himself with a death grip on the angle iron
frame of the trailer, Eric peered ahead of the bouncing Ford.
“Cut the wheel
a little to the left and go around those picnic tables, then hard right onto
the pavement at the bottom of Blue Heron Loop. Then gun it towards the pier.”

The words had hardly left his mouth when the truck
slammed into a pair of ghouls, rocking and bouncing over their bodies as Sam
rounded the picnic tables. The tires gave a rapid series of chirps as he veered
down the loop, shooting past the four car tangle near the bottom and
accelerating.

Almost immediately, Sam’s voice burst through the
headphones.
“Where . . . Where? I’ve got no road to the pier, just a little
foot bridge crossing a gully.”
The truck began to slow down as Sam braked.

“FLOOR IT!”
Eric screamed through the radio.
“You can make it!”
Before the last
syllable was spoken, the V8 engine roared to life and heaved forward, towing
the trailer behind like an angry mother pulling an unruly child through a
department store’s toy section. Eric braced himself against the front wall of
the trailer as Michelle ducked through the sunroof. Two seconds later, the
whine of RPMs pegging at maximum screeched into the air as the truck’s wheels
bounced up and over the narrow culvert. The rigid springs of the utility
trailer slammed into the far edge of the ditch and rocketed Eric skyward before
dropping out from underneath him—their return was accompanied with all the
delicacy and softness of a cast iron ass kicking.

The truck crunched back to earth and sputtered as it
sought to correct the disruption in its fuel supply caused by the hard landing.
With a triple series of impotent coughs, the engine died and the dark blue SUV
began to slow. The impact had shifted Eric against the passenger side wheel
well, and he battled through the haze and pain to regain his senses as Sam
cranked on the ignition. At least a dozen infected were heading their way from
the campground, and his hand was reaching for the Delta when the engine wheezed
to life, idling roughly for a moment as its computer controlled functions
recovered from their hard shutdown. When the lead ghoul closed to within twenty
feet, the Explorer stammered to life and rolled ahead, slowly gathering speed
as Sam fought to keep it alive.

“Are you sure about this?”
Sam asked dryly.

“If you’ve got a better idea, now’s the time.”

Sam grunted in reply and kept on course, steering
towards the rapidly approaching wooden pier.

Eric crab-crawled to the other side of the trailer,
fighting for balance as his eyes found the figure of a boy waving what looked
to be a white sock thrust over the handle of a golf club. After a rapid fire,
back and forth swivel of his neck, repeated twice for clarity as he crunched
the numbers, Eric called out over the radio.
“Sam . . .”

“I see him.”

“Adjust your speed so we come together at the same
time, and then slow down enough,”
he
looked behind him at the congealing swarm heading their way,
“for me to grab
him.”

“I’m on it.”

Michelle popped out of the sunroof and fired several
times into the fast moving throng, dropping at least two, but also causing a guttural
cry to resonate in their ranks as they howled forward in anticipation.

“Mike—right now on the PA—tell the kid to grab my hand
as we come by.”

Instantly, the loudspeakers crackled to life with his
announcement. They were joined a second later with a volley of gunfire as
Callie started winging shots into the ghoul pack.

Sam began to slow as Eric reached out a hand toward
the running boy. He was dressed in a baggy, teal colored rain suit, and Eric
could plainly see tears of fright coursing down his cheeks with the rapid
approach of the grey-skinned monsters.

“GRAB MY HAND!”
Eric shouted, leaning as far to the side as possible. The young boy
thrust out his own hand, dropping the sock covered golf club as he chugged and
huffed with exertion. The trailer bounced over a series of grapefruit sized
rocks, almost shaking Eric off the edge as he reached and stretched. Sam slowed
even further, and the approaching swarm shrieked with ravenous hunger as they
hammered closer. With a final lunge, Eric latched onto the boy’s hand and
jerked him into the trailer.

“GO-GO-GO!”

The Explorer and utility trailer crossed with a triple
thump onto the engineered plastic wood fishing pier, punching straight ahead as
Sam floored it.

“Don’t stop!”
Eric yelled to Sam as he grabbed onto the boy and coiled his legs in
preparation. A brief look showed Mike off to their right, manning the controls
of the ski boat while Callie balanced near the stern, cranking round after
round into the ghouls.

The SUV was passing forty miles per hour when it
shattered through the chain. At that moment Eric vaulted upwards and to the
right, pushing off against the side wall with the boy wrapped tightly in a bear
hug. Their momentary aerial freefall ended abruptly in a smashing roll across
the lakes frigid surface, and the icy water soaked into their clothing,
weighing them down in the numbing chop.

“Give me your hand!” Mike’s roar seemed muted and
distant as Eric struggled to spin the thrashing boy face up in the freezing
water. With a monumental effort, he twisted the kicking child up and over his
head, a move that had the counter effect of forcing his own body beneath the
waves. Several desperate scissor kicks kept him at neutral buoyancy despite his
waterlogged clothing and weapons, but he could feel his legs weakening and
slowing in the biting chill of the lake. The weight in his hands was suddenly
removed, and Eric thrust toward the surface, gasping in a huge gulp of air. As
he surfaced, the hard
crack-crack-crack
of gunfire contested for his
attention with Mike’s howling voice demanding again for his hand. With a weary,
shivering sigh he reached up toward the boat, and a scant moment later he was
pulled from the water and dropped on the deck like a 180 pound tuna. The bright
blue sky above him seemed incredibly vibrant, and each breath that he sucked
through his chattering teeth practically burst with energy and life. Somehow,
after all he’d been through at the campground today, he was still alive. The
rifle fire was dying, and he felt the
thrum
of the engine as the boat
changed positions. A moment later, the catch of the day included a shivering
Michelle, and a very sour faced Sam.

They pulled away from the shore, and Callie grabbed a
large, heavy tarp from the storage compartment under the seat and wrapped it
around the four soaked passengers. “Try and stay huddled together. This will
keep the wind off of you for the ride home.” She disappeared outside the tarp,
and an instant later, the slow rumble of the ski boat’s motor turned into an
intense scream.

Mixtures of emotions were being displayed on the faces
that stared back at him in the soft light penetrating the tarp. The boy’s face
showed absolute exhaustion tinged with fear, and he had wedged himself so tightly
against Eric that his panting breaths were being transmitted directly into
Eric’s rib cage. Michelle's countenance—eyes flared and white teeth
showing—looked like she had just gotten off a violently entertaining roller coaster.
Although on second glance, especially considering the soaked hair that clung to
her cheeks and neck like strawberry blonde seaweed, maybe it was one of those
wild log rides. Sam huddled under the tarp directly opposite of Eric, and his
dark eyes were narrowed under heavy brows as he stared back.

“Well,” Sam huffed in an excessively lumbering
deliverance, “that was fun.”

Eric began to smile in reply but the state trooper
raised a hand and cut him off. “Oh no, I’m not done just yet.” He paused for a
moment and rubbed the side of his face, wincing occasionally during the
process. Several shrugs and rolls of his shoulders followed, and then he held
up two fingers.

“Two things. The first one is that I want you to
promise me . . . swear to me right now . . . that you’ll never again let me
volunteer for one of your ‘stealth’ missions. Hell, I did two tours in the
sandbox as part of a Marine division, and I think we fired less ammo over there
and we just did in a campground in North Dakota.”

Eric’s smile turned into a chuckle, and it was
beginning to infect Michelle as well, but Sam shook his head, spraying all of
them with more water as he continued. “I ain’t done just yet.” He elbowed Michelle
and then pointed an accusatory finger at Eric. “I don’t want to hear any shit
about me being promoted to a U-boat commander, or anything like that. You know
damn well that I’m not the one who sunk Walter’s truck last night, and I’m sure
as shit not the maniac who ordered the scuttling of Michelle’s Explorer.”

The forced silent stalemate was bordering on exploding
into laughter when Callie stuck her head under the tarp. “Is everybody OK? No
broken bones or head injuries?”