Mostly Dead (Barely Alive #3) (12 page)

The vision stopped. My eyesight back, I raised my foot, with all my will and kicked Dominic’s knee. The idiot still stood above me. He staggered backward.

Anger clenched his fists
. He narrowed his eyes. A sharp shaft of pain shot through the back of my brain. I rolled my head back and forth on the ground.

R
ocks dug into my scalp, the pain more welcome than the mental hell he caused. I closed my eyes and yelled, “Stop!” Suddenly the pain was gone.

I sat up.

Dominic watched me from a crouched position, his hands out. His stance reminded me of playing defense in basketball.

We eyed each other. I didn’t know what
had happened, but a shift in power had occurred. Moving to my feet, I never took my eyes off him. “Did you kill them? Or change him?” I didn’t have any illusions about the woman… or even the kids. Dominic ate them and did it with pleasure I’m sure, most likely after he raped the mom.

But Dad. He would do something horrendous to Dad.
And Dad had told him about James. They both had died because of me. And James was as good as dead without a cure.

Far off screams filled the air.

Dominic and I looked north. Smoke snuck through the trees. His zombies must have found the vaccinated humans.

We faced each other and then we
ran. We both crashed through the forest. I headed towards town and Dominic pounded straight to the freeway.

His saliva. His control.

But his greatest fear was women.

I ran as fast as I could, calling on energy I didn’t know I had. At the edge of the trees, I stopped.

Bodies clashed left and right. Men and women, both infected and vaccinated fought on the grass and pavement. Zombies tripped over their own feet, clumsy and unsure. They didn’t stop or even register when people hit them with hands, feet, or sticks. The zombies went for whatever body part they could reach with their teeth.

A little girl, maybe seven, launched herself at a man
standing three feet from me. She snarled as she bit into his thigh. He screamed and slapped her off him. But she came back for more. And more. A younger boy grabbed the man’s forearm and together, the two child zombies dragged the man down and ate him as he thrashed and screamed.

The
body stopped twitching. They grunted, becoming aware of each other as they ate. They growled and attacked each other – fighting over the meat. Rolling on the ground, they abandoned the dead man.

And he was dead. His body didn’t move.

A moment of victory filled me. The vaccines worked.

Nobody watched the tre
es. I knelt down and grabbed the dead man’s outstretched hand and yanked him into the bushes. The kids hadn’t turned him over, where the majority of his meat would be. Yeah, I meant his ass.

Did people still close their eyes when they prayed?
I don’t know who I asked to forgive me, but it was there. I had to eat. If I didn’t eat, I couldn’t help my family. My friends. Heather.

The skunk hadn’t worked. Hopefully, this would be my last time.
Beating out Dominic’s army shouldn’t take long… in my dreams.

If everything went according to plan,
I’d walk into the flames when it was all over and wouldn’t have to worry about eating again.

Methodically, I ignored my task
of tearing his pants off. I ripped the gluteus maximus to shreds and tried not to enjoy the taste as I ate. Seriously, though? So damn good.

Each bite s
hored up my reserves. The padding in my arms and chest returned. My hair rustled, and felt thicker.

The fighting
between the zombies and people raged on. But I stuffed myself as much as I could and didn’t linger. Dull sensations returned to my fingers and toes. Under the man’s blood on my hands, the gray abated in the patches of skin I could see.

My heart didn’t feel like it was made of glass and worked without struggle.
I stood and rolled my shoulders. I hadn’t felt that strong in a while, even with the small bits of the man and girl in Boise. I’d fought eating them, had only taken what I needed to survive.

G
uilt was gone. Heather knew and she was mad, but if I didn’t do it, she wouldn’t make it. Her Grandma Jean wouldn’t survive either.

I stepped over the man’s body. Walking calmly seemed to make me invisible. Not one person attacked me
. Not one zombie approached me. It was like I had lost all meaning. Maybe I had already died and walked amongst them as a ghost. The numbers dwindled. But the vaccinated fought on.

Flames licked the sides of the clinic, spewing from the windows
. A group of zombies crowded a heated opening closest to the doors and watched the orange flickers with hunger.

Half-joking, I called to them from the s
idewalk. “Climb in. It’s terrific.”

To my amazement, one of them broke the remaining glass and
they climbed into the building – one by one. No screams or fighting. As if they knew.

The call of the heat wasn’t as strong with so much meat digesting in my
stomach. I wasn’t cold at all. Staying fed was how Dominic had fought the flames and fire on the drive up. How many people’s deaths had that taken?

W
hy did the zombies do what I said? Had they? Or had that been a fluke?

I faced the mass of zombies fighting humans and yelled, “Jump in t
he fire.” But only a few nearby looked my way before resuming their fight for food.
Crap.
Apparently it’d been a coincidence.

If the clinic was on fire, then where was Heather? And James and the rest of them? My bike hadn’t been touched, but James’
s had disappeared.

What if Heather
was stuck inside? What if they hadn’t been able to get out? James’s bike could’ve been stolen. I thought hard, trying to focus on James – wherever he was. “
James, you out there?”
No reply worried me more.

Dominic’s voice reverberated through my head.
“Ha, you lost James, huh? I bet I find him first.”
The chuckle reminded me of a wicked witch I’d seen once on TV.

My head felt full, too crowded. Brian’s complaint made sense. The pressure created a headache I shouldn’t be having with my virus and amazing healing abilities.

I growled, “Go away.”

But he laughed harder.
“I don’t know what happened back there. Don’t worry, there won’t be a repeat. Well, I better go. I have a bitch to catch. Race you, Paul.”
The zombies around me stopped their fighting and lumbered toward the main road cutting through town.

The people they’d f
ought stood or sat up from where they’d fallen on the ground. So many more just lay where they’d landed. Dead. Such a waste of meat. Zombies queued up and followed the pavement out of town.

A large number of people gathered
at the end of the cement walkway. More came, some limping, other’s holding their arms or helping others join the group. They needed a leader, someone to get them the hell out of there before Dominic returned with more hungry followers.

Why was I the only one ever a
round when a leader was needed?

I drove my
bike into the gathering of over three hundred people. Living people, injured or not. I cut the engine. They stared at me, unsure what the hell was going on.

My voice carried on the
post-battle stillness. “I’ve never seen anyone walk away from an attack like that without being infected themselves.” People pressed closer to hear me. I raised my voice. “They’ll come back. They have to. They want to eat. They have to eat. It’s all they can think about.”

Someone in the back yelled, “Why’d they leave?”

I followed the disappearing zombie group with my eyes. They didn’t even look back. “I don’t know. But I promise they’ll be back. Their leader wants something up here. And since you’re all vaccinated, you’re fresh meat. He doesn’t have to worry about making new ones. You’re their food.” I looked at the gas tank and glared at the gauge almost on empty.

No one spoke. The smell of
coppery flesh wasn’t as all-consuming as I’d grown used to. Maybe once I had something in my stomach, I didn’t have to worry about eating everything in sight.

I crossed my arms and raised my eyes.
As I neared the end of my life, I ran through fuel faster and faster.

Meeting the gazes of one after another in the group, I debated telling them I was a zombie, one of the enemies.
Nah, they’d tear me apart.

A middle-aged woman a few feet from the center raised her injured hand like we were in
Zombie 101 Class. “If they won’t stop, how do we kill them?”

“I got a gun at home that will stop them.” Rough and dressed like a biker, a man
nodded his head, the toughness just a little dimmed down with his ear half-bitten off. A large cross was tattooed into his forehead, the edges spreading toward the heavens.

I rolled my eyes.
“I saw one shot and he kept on going.” Keeping the fact that it was my brother quiet wasn’t unethical – it was… practical.

“Then how do we fight them?”

“We can’t win.”

“How can we do this?”

“Why did we get vaccinated?”

They spoke over each other.

I raised my hands. “You got vaccinated so you wouldn’t eat your family members.” I yelled the next part. “You can kill them with fire. But that’s it. Fire.” The people stared blankly at me, as if my words didn’t register. “We need to set up a safe zone, create ditches and fill them with fuel and set it on fire. Lots and lots of fire. They can’t stay away from it.”

Nobody moved, just continued watching me, as if waiting for a cue. “I’m heading out this way. There’s a space set up nort
h of town. We have plenty of room and more vaccines for anybody else who wants to comes.”

I didn’t wait for them. If they stayed frozen, I wouldn’t be able to move them whether I stood with them or not.
I pushed the bike back with my legs and kick started it again. Hopefully, I’d have enough gas to get me back to Grandma Jean’s. Hopefully, James and the rest of them had made it there. I was
hoping
all over the place.

Dominic wanted to race
to Heather. But I wanted him to find
me
. If he was where I was when I walked into the flames, maybe I could make him go with me. That’d be the perfect way to keep Heather safe… from both of us.

I reached Grandma Jean’s and sighed at seeing James’s bike. Cutting my engine, I jumped off when I heard the high pitched screaming coming from inside the house. Crap, what had happened while I’d been gone?

Two at a time, the steps took me less than three seconds. Through the front door, I looked around. Connie, Travis, and Heather stood beside the couches in the living room. Heather must have been the one screaming, her hand covered her mouth and sobs shook her shoulders. I rushed to her side. “Heather, what’s wrong? Where’s Mom and Grandma Jean?”

That’s when I saw them.

Mom lay on the ground beside the table, face down. She shook as if in the throes of a seizure. I knelt beside her and gently rolled her over, careful to avoid flailing hands and gnashing teeth. Her graying skin covered her head to toe. She tried biting me. I scooped her up and set her on the couch, careful to keep out of reach. She never opened her eyes. While on her back, she didn’t move when I let go of her. I reached out and poked her. She snapped out at me, and then lay back when I stopped.

Arms out, I
pushed the other three back. “Don’t get too close. I’m not sure what’s happening.”

Grandma Jean
rested face-up on the settee. Her skin, too, had grayed. A deep heat emanated from her skin inches from my knee. I could feel it through the denim of my jeans. “Hell, she feels like she’s on fire.” I hadn’t noticed a feverish heat to my mom’s skin. I stepped around the table and felt her forehead with the back of my hand. Her heat was rising, hadn’t yet reached the level Grandma Jean had.

And she didn’t bite at me again.

Between both the couch and the loveseat, I couldn’t decide who was in worse shape. Grandma Jean hadn’t tried snapping my hand off, but my mom hadn’t reached boiling temps. I rubbed my hand over my face.

Oh, hell. “What is going on? What happened?” I faced Connie, Travis, and Heather. “Where’s James?”

Connie shrugged. “James disappeared outback a little bit ago. I haven’t seen him. Maybe he went to eat.” She ignored my question about the women.

I stared at her, less concerned about James and more worried about the two down.

She held up her hands. “What? Vaccines have adverse affects all the time. Looks like this is one of them.”

I crossed to her and wrapped my hands around her neck. Travis pulled on my arm. I didn’t look at him, but snarled, “Back off, Duncan.”
He complied, even though he fought for his self-control and the power to overcome what I said. I squeezed Connie’s neck and put my face up to hers. “Start caring, Connie, ‘cause I can kill your body and then it doesn’t matter when or if we find a cure. At least for you. Understand?”