Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) (11 page)

Realizing she was squeezing her eyes shut, she reluctantly opened them and saw a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots standing on the other side the bed.

Without a second thought, she brought the pistol around and fired directly into the man’s left foot. The report was deafening within the narrow confines of the bedroom, and through the haze, she glimpsed the damage the bullet inflicted before the man toppled to the floor in agony. His snakeskin boot appeared as though it had molted, revealing a cloven hoof where the bullet shredded the center of his foot underneath its scaly exterior.

Landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud, the man immediately looked to where she hid crouched behind the bed. He began to point his gun in her direction but another shot erupted from the .45 caliber pistol before he had the weapon halfway.

Staring intensely, she waited for the fifth and final man, but saw no sign of him. Cautiously, she stood and eased out of cover. As she crept around the foot of the bed, she heard quiet whimpering coming from just outside the room. She entered the hallway and found the last man sitting on the ground, back against the wall. When he noticed her, he raised his red-rimmed eyes to meet hers, and she saw the same odd, aloof smile she had seen earlier. Although he said nothing, she halfway expected him to ask her if he could still tend the rabbits. After a moment of indecision and second-guessing, she placed the barrel against his forehead and squeezed the trigger.

The strange smile never left his face as he slumped to the ground.
I guess that makes me George.

Numb from the thought of what she had just done, she let the pistol fall from her hand as she moved wraith-like through the house. Upon reaching the dining room where she had been bound to the table, she felt dizzy and braced herself against the wall to keep from falling. As she stared at the gore-encrusted room, her dizziness crescendoed into a violent, whirling vertigo that threatened to slam her into the ground. Clamping her eyes shut tightly, she prayed for everything to disappear. She leaned into the wall and slid to the ground, hoping it was all merely a dream.

* * *

Unsure of how much time elapsed, she was roused by the sound of voices coming from within the house. Her eyelids strained against the blood that glued them shut. Although she could not see the source, she could plainly make out what was being said.

“What the hell happened here?” one man asked, voice muffled by the handkerchief covering his mouth and nose. “What kind of person would just slaughter men like this?”

Another, deeper voice spoke in reply, “What was she supposed to do? They would have killed her, or worse.”

The first man said, “This doesn’t look like self-defense to me. Look at the bodies; most of them were savagely murdered. I don’t think anyone aside from the Devil himself, or at least one of his minions, could do something like this.”

With disagreement evident in his voice, the second man rebuked, “John, this is Kate we’re talking about here!”

The woman charged out of the corner upon hearing her name, knife raised high above her head, poised to cut the two men down. Before she reached them, however, she felt a forceful tug on her shoulder. Although she tried to pull free and continue forward, the restraint did not relent. In the distance, as if speaking to her from a million miles away, she heard the faint word repeated over and over with gradually increasing volume and clarity.

“Kate. Kate! KATE!”

Bolting upright, her breath coming in ragged gasps, she gazed bleary-eyed at the enormous black man sitting next to her in the Hummer. Composing herself, Kate said, “Reams? I’m sorry… I must have been dreaming.”

7

October 22, 2015

Marengo County, Alabama

Crouched behind the rocks, Ava’s mind raced frantically, energized by the knowledge that her father, John Wild, was alive and less than a quarter of a mile away from her. It pained her to think that he did not know she was still alive. In fact, she expected he had already been to their house and assumed she, like her mother, was dead.
I need to tell him I’m alive—to tell him I’m here! I need to get to him!
The thought that he might leave after finding her mother’s mutilated corpse nearly made her jump up and race across the field right then. It took everything she had to stay pinned behind the cover of the boulders. Too much was happening too quickly, and she found it almost impossible to think with a clear and level head. She stared across the impossible distance with circumspect eyes.

Tears of joy, screams of frustration, and snarls of anger all rattled around inside her little body at once, slamming into her like the brutal waves of the rising tide.
It’s not fair! Damn it!
She knew that was a bad word but she thought it anyway, no longer caring about such things. If the world could be so cruel as to place a father and a daughter in such close proximity yet keep them separated by such an insurmountable distance, then bad words like that were far less than it deserved. She felt her emotions rising rapidly like steam in a pressure cooker, and she fought to get a handle on them.

Understanding that she needed to act now or risk losing the chance to reunite with her father, Ava took a long steadying breath to calm her addled mind. She glanced over her shoulder toward the indomitable horde below—still reaching, and still every bit as massive. For now, she was out of sight atop the large rock formation, opposite the side she had climbed to reach the vantage point. She racked her brain for ideas about how to get off the rock and around the imposing swarm safely. If she had all the time in the world she could probably lay low until the majority of the infected lost interest, pulled elsewhere in pursuit of their next victim. She had escaped several tight spots in such a way before, and she knew that with enough time something else always captured the attention of the mindless monsters. Sensing the hands of the clock spiraling out of control with maddening speed, she realized she did not have that luxury. The time to act was now or never. ‘
Fish or cut bait!’ as Dad would say.

Trying desperately to come up with any semblance of a plan, she laid out the facts about her current situation as her father had instructed to do when she faced a tough situation with no obvious solution. Considering the resources at her disposal, she came up with very little. She had food and water for a day, maybe two if she rationed it carefully. She had no weapons and was so far outnumbered that anything short of a guided missile was not likely to be of much use anyway. All of these disadvantages, she reminded herself, were no different than the ones she had been saddled with since the beginning of this wretched epidemic, and she had survived thus far.

When she thought about exactly what had allowed her to survive alone in this dangerous and desolate world for so long, she knew it was largely due to what she possessed inside rather than any extraneous resources at her disposal. Chief among these were her quick, sharp mind and her uncanny ability to move with speed and stealth; fortunately, she still had these in her arsenal.

At once, an idea came to her. Reaching into her tattered backpack, she pulled out the disgusting ziplock bag Jim had given her the day she met him. The initial bag was sealed inside several others in order to more securely contain its noxious contents. When he first tried to give her the vile parcel she adamantly refused, thinking the man some perverse deviant. Once he explained, however, she eventually accepted his disgusting offering with great reluctance. Inside were the partial remains of a dead raccoon that Jim had scraped off the side of the road a couple of weeks earlier. Rotten and stinking, he told Ava that the rancid material could be used to mask her scent from the infected in an emergency. Although it was far from perfect and supremely disgusting, he had done just that with success on more than one occasion.
‘Enough carrion can hide even the sweetest little girl,’
he had told her, following it up with a little grin.

Stranded on an island amidst a veritable ocean of the infected, she truly hoped he was right. As she stared at the grisly contents, she remembered a time just before he died when she found the previously flat bag to be swollen and distended—inflated like a mephitic balloon given to some unfortunate child by the world’s most twisted birthday clown. Jim deflated the bag and resealed it before handing it back to her for safekeeping. The rotting smell of the putrescent gas, an odor so strong you could taste it, made her vomit then. She could hardly imagine how much worse it would be now.

Retrieving a piece of precious toilet paper from her pack, she tore it into two pieces before stuffing her nostrils full of the pillow-soft tissue. Given that toilet paper had become more valuable than gold and harder to find than a three-legged unicorn, she silently mourned the loss of even a single sheet. When she felt the cold, rubbery chunks of decomposing meat squishing between her fingers and saw the mangled bits of fur floating in the dark, watery mélange, she struggled to keep from retching.
Who am I kidding? I’d give a thousand sheets of toilet paper if it would keep me from smelling this disgusting roadkill ever again.

Staying low, she eased over to the far side of the boulder, trying to muster the courage to carry through with her plan as she went. “Come on, Ava. You’ve done this sort of thing a hundred times before. You can do it. Dad is waiting,” she said, hoping to bolster her tenuous resolve. Like a swimmer mentally preparing for the icy shock of frigid water on a cold autumn morning, she took several long, deep breaths and opened the ziplock bag. Despite the toilet paper nose plugs, she immediately smelled the cloying stench of death that wafted out of the bag. As soon as the noxious vapor reached the back of her tongue, the taste immediately caused a rush of bile to flood the back of her throat. The bitter flavor proved a welcomed reprieve from the acrid taste of death it replaced. Reluctantly, she dipped her delicate fingers into the bag and scooped out a sample of the cadaverous goulash.

Unable to issue the command for the next requisite action, the vast majority of Ava’s cerebral cortex simply shut down, relinquishing control to some primordial brain center that lacked the capacity for reason. As if on autopilot, she smeared the tainted, oily consommé over every conceivable part of her body. The vapors exuded by the raccoon pâté made her eyes water profusely. It felt as though her body was absorbing the deathly molecules, incorporating them into the very fabric of her being and forever altering the essence of her soul.

With her rational mind unwilling to participate in her appalling plan, Ava no longer felt burdened by the fear that nearly crippled her moments before. Now, she moved on pure instinct and desire—the desire to reunite with her father. Like a cat advancing on its unsuspecting prey, she silently climbed down the side of the boulder. Unaware that their quarry had departed, the infected monsters continued to scratch and claw at the rock as though their efforts might eventually be rewarded with the tasty morsel they steadfastly pursued.

Abetted by the shadows blossoming in the fading light, Ava moved guardedly, sliding smoothly through the underbrush like a serpent through the grass. Even to the attentive eye, she looked like little more than a gentle breeze rustling through the foliage as she moved. Taking it on faith that what Jim told her about the abilities of the festering paste was true, she hoped she would be all but invisible to the depraved creatures as long as she kept her movements slow, and her sound to a minimum.

As she rounded the front of the boulder, Ava’s heart rate quickened when she realized she was less than twenty-five yards away from the infected horde. She did not dare look in their direction, instead focusing only on her destination as she fought to stifle any thoughts of the horrors they promised. With rising panic, Ava discovered she could no longer see her father in the distance. While she hoped this was merely the result of her loss of elevation, she worried she might already be too late. The thought nearly forced her into a dead sprint, and while her body did not increase in speed, her mind raced ahead at a million miles per minute.

Losing focus, Ava took a careless step and cringed when the sharp crack of a twig resonated like a gunshot across the short distance to the horde. She stopped abruptly, but the damage was done. Several of the infected on the group’s periphery had already shifted their attention and were moving in her direction. She stood, rooted to the spot, praying for a miracle as she watched her chance to reunite with her father slip away before her very eyes. With awkward steps, the three infected things drew steadily closer.

When she stared into their vacant eyes, crisscrossed with thin, dark lines like tiny oil pipelines, she saw no hint of recognition of anything at all. Ava did not think they saw her; in fact, she was certain they did not. She could almost feel them staring straight through her as though trying to focus on something an infinite distance away.

Despite her desperate pleas to a higher power, the infected continued their heedless advance in the direction of the sound that had tripped an alarm in their reptilian brains. She had to get out of their path if she were to have any chance of escape, but she needed to do so with the utmost care in order to avoid drawing any further attention. It was almost as though an array of sensors controlled them, and she had merely been the most recent trigger. If she could slip away slowly and quietly, she imagined they would continue walking indefinitely—at least until something else redirected their attention.

Ava gazed longingly toward the place where her father had been standing. Seeing no one, she felt her anxiety rising.
Was he ever even there, or was I seeing things? Maybe I’ve finally gone crazy.
Once again, she tried to focus on the immediate problem despite the horror it entailed; a task made easier by the low, guttural rasps of the approaching creatures. The terrifying sound was more like that of air being forced through a ragged hole than any actual human vocalization. With the closest of the infected only ten feet away and showing no sign of changing trajectory, she knew she had to act. 

Torn between reuniting with her father and ensuring her own survival, Ava turned abruptly, planting her right foot in a small hole obscured by the dense undergrowth as she did. Before she could stop herself, she let out a short cry of pain as she fell to the ground. Although barely audible and impossibly brief, the tiny shriek was enough to garner the attention of most of the infected still scrabbling at the rock face. Realizing the danger she was in, Ava leapt to her feet, ignoring the pain in her right ankle. Although it hurt immensely, she could bear weight on it, and she knew that any pain in her ankle was nothing compared to what she would experience if the horde caught her.

Despite the fact that her situation had gone from bad to worse, she kept glancing to her right as she ran, hoping for any indication that her father was still there. Having finally seen him after so many weeks, the fact that she was running
away
from him was soul-crushing. With her mind dulled by the pain and her attention focused on searching the horizon for her father, Ava failed to notice the rotting leg lying in her path as she fled.

For the second time in as many minutes, Ava found herself nearly horizontal in the air. She crashed to the ground with a hard thud that forced all of the air from her lungs. Unable to draw a breath, panic tightened around her throat like a vice. For an instant she wondered if one of the infected had fallen upon her, the deathly grip around her neck that of its skeletal fingers. Eyes wild with oxygen deprivation, she glanced in every direction, sure she would see death incarnate any second.

At first her rattled brain could not rectify all of the sensory input it received. She heard an untold number of ghastly moans, thick with ravenous desire, coming from behind her. Yet, the embodiment of those sounds stood less than ten feet in front of her.
Maybe it’s an auditory illusion from the sound reverberating off the rock face. Or maybe I got turned around in the fall.
When she saw the thing that had brought her to the ground, everything came back into focus at once. Staring in horror at the moldering leg, her head shot up as she became cognizant of the danger closing in on her from every direction.

Mind and vision clearing, she saw at least six shadowy figures ahead of her on the path she had been following. As she had put some distance between herself and the pursuing horde, the group in front of her was far closer. Even so, the sounds of the larger horde behind her drowned out their inarticulate moans. The two closest infected took notice of her immediately. The first appeared to have been a fairly unattractive female even before the infection. It had short, curly, black hair and somehow still wore glasses on its ruined face. Fair portions of both cheeks were missing, highlighting its porcine nose in an obscene way. The miserable thing scraped and clawed at the ground in tireless pursuit, unfazed by the fact that one of its legs had been amputated at the hip. As Ava stared at the sinewy mess trailing behind its disarticulated stump, she got the distinct impression that she recognized the person the thing used to be, although she could not place her.

Wasting no more time on the matter, Ava vaulted to her feet, once again poised to run. Before she took the first step, however, the second infected thing shambled into view, and the sight of it was more horrible than anything Ava had seen. Standing before her on unsteady legs was the squalid form of what had been a beautiful child—now a grotesque and mocking caricature of innocence lost. The little girl was likely no older than ten at the time of infection. Clothes threadbare and skin mottled, Ava wondered if she looked much different than the thing in front of her. A backpack, no less tattered than hers, still hung loosely from its shoulders. Like its owner’s gaping maw, the unzipped main compartment hung open widely as though waiting to be filled with schoolwork that would never be completed. Despite its ghoulish exterior and obvious hellish intent, Ava wanted to believe she saw something good flicker somewhere in its unholy depths, as if trying rise up and escape but only managing to ripple the surface.