Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (10 page)

Marko opens the hood of the Landcruiser. He unscrews a cap located on the top
of the engine block and pours about half a gallon of oil inside. “That should
do the trick.”

“So what’s the plan now?” Kenji asks.

“Well, now that I think about it, we should
probably go back to the maintenance shed and grab some more fuel,” Marko
answers. “You can never have enough, you know? And then we should head for the
village. The living quarters. There’s a communal area over there. That’s where
we’ll find food. We might even find water.”

“And you’re sure there’s no infected
around?” Sarah asks.

“Like I told you, we’ve been here before.
Never had any trouble.”

Kenji nods along. I notice his rifle is
armed and ready. Something has Kenji spooked.

A hunch.

A gut feeling.

We begin walking back towards the
maintenance shed. Billy is still running around on his own. He has once again
completely disappeared from view. When we arrive back at the shed, Marko waves
us forward, and this time, he leads us inside.

“What’s up?” Kenji asks.

Marko points ahead to the far wall of the
shed. “Just need some help with these fuel
containers.
Not sure which ones are full and which ones are empty. The quicker we find out,
the sooner we can get out of here.”

Marko, Kenji and Sarah start checking each
fuel container.

And I really should be helping them, but
instead of checking for fuel, I’m drawn to the large windows situated on the
back wall of the shed. The windows look out towards the mine pit. The site of
the mine pit takes my breath away. The whole thing is massive. Over a mile
wide. Impossible to see how deep it is from our vantage point. But it looks
like someone, a giant, has come along and cut the Earth wide open. It kind of
looks like a moon scape, something that’s even more barren than a desert.

While I’m staring at the mine pit,
something catches my attention in the corner of my eye.

Something out there is moving. Something
out there is alive.

Dead, yet alive. Moving, hunting.

And my earlier fears about the pit, that it
would be full of bones and carcasses and corpses, that something big and bad
would be hiding inside it… these fears have come to life.

I see something crawl out of the pit.
Something
. A thing. A monster. The pit
was to the west of our location and as a result, I could only see this thing’s
silhouette against the setting sun. It looks like a man. But bigger than any
man I’ve ever seen. It has impossibly long arms, dragging along the dirt
ground. It is enormous.

“There’s something out there,” I whisper.
“It’s coming this way. We need to hide.”

My voice sounds relatively calm, even
though I am freaking out on the inside. Even though, I am terrified.

The others rush over to the window. Billy
is still nowhere to be seen.

Marko sees it immediately. He pulls us to
the ground so we are hidden below the window. “Goddamn it,” he says, swearing a
string of curse words under his breath. “I guess there’s a first time for
everything.”

“What the hell do we do now?” Sarah asks.

“We should take him out,” Marko answers
confidently. “There’s only one. We’ve got three rifles between us. We can do
this.”

“Three? Where the hell is Billy?” I ask.

Marko shakes his head. “Hopefully he is
hiding.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,”
Kenji says. “Look at the size of him. We don’t know how many bullets it will
take to put him down.”

“It will only take one. One headshot.
That’ll take care of him.”

But Kenji is not convinced. “I don’t know
about this. He might not be alone.”

Billy returns from wherever he’s been. He
sees us crouched around the window. He sees the look in our eyes. “Something
wrong?”

“Get down,” Marko says. “We’ve got
company.”

Kenji thinks it over. He has a quick look
out the window. “You and me,” he says to Marko. “We’ll flank him. Open fire.
Sarah, Rebecca, you guys stay down. Stay in here.”

Marko points to a door labelled, ‘storage’.
“You can hide in there, girls. Probably a bit safer. Billy will stay with you.”

Billy nods. “Let’s go.” He leads us to the
door.

We crouch run over to the storage room,
staying below the window for the most part. And then I can’t help myself. I
sneak a quick look outside. The monster man is getting closer. If I had to
guess, I’d say it knows we’re here.

The
Oz-virus is designed to find life.

Billy arrives at the storage room first.
But there is something wrong. The door to the room is covered in scratch marks
and claw marks. The wood is cracked and splintered and broken.

The handle is loose and crooked.

The lock is broken.

Billy doesn’t see these warning signs. He
doesn’t pay them any attention.

He turns the handle. The handle comes
completely loose, falls to the ground. Billy pushes the door open anyway.

And then we hear a howl.

A scream.

This storage room is full of infected
people. They had been locked away, probably since the beginning.

Billy slams the door shut as quickly as he
can.

But the lock is broken. The door is broken.

“Run,” Marko says. “Run!”

Before we can move, the monster punches a
fist through the window. He must’ve covered three or four hundred feet in a
matter of seconds. Glass explodes into the garage, showering the floor.

“Get to the car!” Marko shouts. “Now!”

The infected smash through the door, their
arms are outstretched, mouths wide open.

Billy unloads with his rifle. He hits the
first infected man, a guy wearing a work uniform. He hits him in the chest. He
flies back, but the bullet does not kill him and it does not stop him.

Marko grabs his brother, pulls him outside.

We run for the car.

The infected are giving chase. I don’t know
how many.

Too many.

I don’t know how long they had been locked
up in that room for.

Months probably.

Since the beginning of the outbreak.

“Why didn’t they attack us the first time?”
I yell over my shoulder, looking back.

“Don’t know,” Kenji answers. “Maybe they
didn’t know we were there.”

Maybe. I remember Marko telling us to wait
outside. Telling us to be quiet. He was the only one who went in the first time
around. He alone retrieved the containers of oil. Billy ran off somewhere else.
Where did he go? I guess it doesn’t matter now. We’re under attack. We need to
move. We need to get the hell out of here. I turn around and pick up the pace.
But Kenji stops running. He drops to one knee and opens fire.

The car is surrounded by infected people.
They are banging on the work tray, rocking the car back and forth. They know
there is someone inside.

The Evo Agent.

They want to feed on him.

They want to infect him.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Sarah
asks.

Marko catches up to Kenji and opens fire.
He is an excellent marksman. A dead eye. He takes out two infected people with
two shots.

“I thought you said this place was
deserted!” Sarah says. “I thought you said it was empty!”

“It’s been empty every other time,” Marko
answers. “We’ve never had any trouble.”

I open fire. I’m pretty sure I hit some of
the infected people, but I am nowhere near as accurate as Kenji or Marko.

“Stop firing!” Marko snaps. “You’ll hit the
car!”

I lower my rifle and save my bullets. He’s
right. One stray bullet from me, and I could puncture the engine or the fuel
tank. Then it would be all over. At the moment, the Landcruiser is our only
ticket out of here.

“What the hell do we do now?” Billy asks.

“We need to clear them off the car,” Marko
says. “Or better yet, we need to draw them away.”

“How do we do that?”

“Head for the village,” he answers quickly.
“We can lead them away. We take them out before they get the chance to corner
us.”

Kenji unloads another barrage at the
infected. He is careful not to hit the car.

That’s the last thing we want. Shooting the
car up. Shooting the tires out. The engine.

I look over my shoulder. The infected are
stumbling out of the maintenance shed, forcing the large sliding door wide
open.

Marko starts backing away, back towards the
village. “We need to move! We need to hide and regroup. Come on!”

We start running again. The infected are
closing in from multiple directions. And that’s not even the worst part. The
worst part is we don’t even know where that monster is.

It could be anywhere.

The only thing I know for certain is… it’s
coming for us.

We run towards the village, to the residential sector of this ‘live-in’,
self-contained mine sit. We run for about a mile and a half. I am suddenly
extremely grateful for the extra water and the extra rest I have received over
the past twenty-four hours.

The village is depressing. It is row after
row of temporary, demountable cubes. Each one is about the size of a shipping
container. Maybe a bit smaller. They very well could’ve been re-purposed
shipping containers. Each one had a small front porch with a few steps leading
up to the front door.

“We need to hide,” Marko says, leading the
way. “In one of these houses.”

He calls them houses, but they are barely
big enough to be called a room.

“There’s no hiding from the infected,” I
answer.

“Well, we need to protect ourselves and
regroup. At least until we can figure out how to get the jump on them. And we
need to lead them away from the car.”

“I agree,” Sarah says. “Which one should we
hide in?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marko says. “They’re
all the same.”

“Are they locked?” Kenji asks.

“No. None of them have locks on their
doors. No need.”

“Really?”

“The only one that has a lock on its doors
is the Executive House,” Billy answers.

“Executive House?” Kenji says.

“Yeah, it’s like an actual two story
house,” Marko says. “It’s more of a homestead, really. Probably reserved for
the big wigs.”

“Can we hide there?” Sarah asks. “Might be
safer?”

“We can’t,” Marko says. “It’s all locked
up. Boarded up.”

“Boarded up? Like, as in
it’s
barricaded? That means there might be someone inside. Survivors. People.”

“I doubt it,” Marko answers. “Never heard a
peep out of that place. But then again, never had the need to tear down the
barricades. We’ve always found enough food in the communal areas and the other
living quarters.”

We have run deeper into the village, each
building, each shack looks the same. They are nothing more than a plain metal
box. I decide to take charge and make my way towards the nearest one. I run up
the stairs, onto the front porch. I’m about to open the door, But Kenji holds
me back, grabbing me by the shoulder.

“Get behind me,” he says.

I don’t argue.

Kenji steps in front of me, to the front of
the group. “Watch the road,” he says to Marko and Billy. “If they get too
close, if you’ve got a clear shot, take them out.”

“You got it,” Marko answers. “I’m pretty
sure this house is empty.”

Kenji ignores Marko and proceeds with
extreme caution. He opens the door and raises his rifle. He moves inside. A few
seconds later he says, “It’s clear. Come on. Before they see us.”

Sarah makes her way inside.

Billy and Marko step up on to the porch.

I look back down the road, back the way we
came. The infected are nowhere to be seen.

Are they still around the Landcruiser?

If they are, it means we’ll have to go and
get them, lead them away. And this means someone will have to lure them away,
playing the role of live bait.

I hate this plan.

I’m about to make my way inside when all of
a sudden I see a man.

A normal, healthy man.

He is standing on the road, in front of the
large Executive House.

He sees me. I know he does. And as soon as
we make eye contact he turns and runs back towards the house.

“Hey!” I call out.

The man looks over his shoulder, but he
keeps running.

“What is it?” Kenji asks.

“A person,” I say in shock, in complete and
utter disbelief. “It’s a man. A survivor. A non-infected human being. He must
be hiding in that house. Maybe he can help us.”

And I don’t know why, but as I’m telling
Kenji that maybe this guy can help us, I’ve walked off the front porch, down the
stairs, out on to the middle of the road. I’ve walked away from Kenji and the
others.

“Rebecca, get back here!” Kenji says. “We
need to hide.”

“We should follow this guy,” I say. “He can
help us. He can hide us away. Look at the size of that house.”

The house is huge. It has solid sandstone
walls. Solid doors. But more importantly, the windows appeared to be all
boarded up.

If this guy could let us in, we’d have a
better chance of surviving. The infected would make short work of one of these
worker’s shacks. The walls were made out of extremely thin aluminum and
plywood. Each window was big and brittle and fragile.

“Rebecca!” Kenji shouts. “Get back here! We
don’t know anything about that guy. We don’t know if he’s alone. We don’t know
anything. We need to hide. We need to hide right now!”

Kenji has now moved out on to the road. He
is urging me to come back. But I am not listening. This guy has been living
here for a long time. He’s boarded up that mansion. He’s turned it into a
stronghold. He has survived here. He
lives
here. I know he does.

There’s no other possible explanation.

But would he let us in?

What if he refused?

What happens then?

This is a big if…

This is a big risk.

I decide that Kenji is right. We need to
hide first. We need to clear the infected out and get them away from the
Landcruiser so we can make our escape. This guy, this lone survivor, we will
never know who he is. We will never know if he’s alone. We will never know how
he has survived out here for all these months.

I turn around to make my way inside. But as
soon as I turn around, I freeze. I stop dead.

The big thing, the monster, it is on top of
the shack. Again, it is silhouetted by the sun, crouching silently, ready to
pounce, ready to attack. It casts a very large shadow. And as I’m thinking
about how large its shadow is, it launches itself into the air, towards Kenji.

And there is no time for Kenji to react.

No time for anyone to react.

The monster jumps on top of Kenji, on to
his back, tackling him and driving him into the road.

I raise my rifle. I need to shoot it. I
need to open fire. But I can’t get a clear shot. If I shoot right now, I’ll hit
Kenji. I’ll kill him.

But maybe I already have killed him.

This is my fault.

If it wasn’t for me, for my curiosity, we’d
already be inside.

The monster raises a hand full of claws. It
is about to strike. It is about to rip Kenji’s head off.

I hear two gunshots in quick succession.

Marko has opened fire. He takes the
monster’s hand clean off. And then he shoots the monster’s head.

It explodes.

And the monster falls forward, slumping on
top of Kenji.

Billy jumps down on to the road and drags
the monster’s lifeless corpse off of Kenji. And I nearly drop my own rifle. I
nearly fall to my knees.

Has he been bitten?

Is he… is he okay?

Is he hurt?

I can’t speak. I am paralyzed.

Billy helps Kenji to his feet. He is
covered in blood. I can’t tell if it’s his, or the monster’s.

I can’t tell.

I don’t know.

I take a step forward, I start running
towards Kenji. I need to check, I need to know that he is okay, that my stupid
actions haven’t killed him.

But as soon as I move, the infected arrive.
They arrive not from the road, not from back where we came. Instead, they slip
through the buildings, they slip between the cheap and temporary miner’s
shacks, instantly surrounding us, cutting off any hope I have of getting
inside.

Billy drags Kenji back up the stairs, onto
the front porch, back inside the shack. Marko opens fire, killing the infected
that stumble too close to me.

He is an excellent shot. Maybe even as good
as Kenji.

Marko then turns towards me. His rifle is
aimed directly at my head.

I hold my breath. “No!”

Something grabs my shoulder.

Marko takes the shot, killing an infected
man who had snuck up behind me.

“Go!” he yells. “Run. Hide. When you can,
when it’s safe, make your way back to the Landcruiser. We won’t leave without
you.”

The infected are all around me. They are so
close.

I take out my hand gun and I unload an
entire magazine in a matter of seconds. I clear some space. Just enough. But I’m
not sure if I kill any of the infected. I’m not even sure if I hit anything.

I am too scared to think straight. Too
scared to aim properly.

So I do what Marko told me to do and I run.

I run for the sandstone house at the end of
this road. The house with solid walls and solid doors and boarded up windows.

I know there is a man inside.

I know he has protected himself.

I know he has survived here for months.

I just don’t know if he’ll help me.