Scavengers (31 page)

“Get out of the way, David!” Brooks shouted.

David ducked and rolled, jerking his ankle free, leaving Bal Shem on his knees in the middle of the room. David immediately engaged two of the other infected, leaping to his feet and rushing them, beating them back with the pistol and pushing them out the back door, while Robbins and Dejah pummeled the third zombie with a heavy stapler and a lamp.

“Wait! We have to let the serum work!” Robbins screamed to Brooks.

Bal Shem crawled forward, a new gun hanging limply in his hand. He gradually gained control of it, enough to point it directly at Robbins. It was clear he was trying to coordinate his hand with his thoughts, but his finger kept sliding from the trigger.

“Fuck it! We don’t have time! It’s all gone to hell anyway, doc.  The plan failed.  We’ve just got to get out of here if we can.” Brooks shoved Robbins aside, out of harm’s way.

Brooks fired at Bal Shem before he could level the gun. The soldier blew him away. The terrorist’s head exploded with rapid gunfire. It cracked into three chunks from the focused impacts of multiple bullets, and the rest of the skull sprayed in shards of bone and brain matter. He’d been so infected that some of the fluid was black where it should have been red or gray. The brackish blood splattered the trailer wall in a thick, oily coat of ichor evoking images of Rorschach art.

Brooks whacked another infected in the head with the butt of his rifle, busting the monster’s skull clean open. It smacked the floor with dead weight. More infected were pouring into the trailer through the back door.

Robbins looked out the front window. “Those fucking idiots! They’ve all gone around back!” he screamed incredulously, giddy with the opportunity. 

Robbins unlocked the front door and went through.  David hefted Selah over his shoulder, and Dejah made a run for it down the trailer stairs, close behind. Brooks brought up the rear, changing clips, and spraying the onrushing band of infected with bullets.

They ran. Where they headed they didn’t know yet, but the edge of Lake Tawakoni loomed closer than anything. They jumped a sagging section of barbed wire and continued running. The lake’s edge was the only place that wasn’t yet swarmed with zombies. It was their best chance.

Thomas emerged from behind a tent in the distance behind them. “Dejah!”

She saw only a glimpse of him. “Come on!” she shouted, running to stay with the group. She followed them onward — Robbins, David and the bobbing figure of her daughter, Selah.

Brooks stopped every few paces to mow down whatever infected chose to trail them.

Then she heard Thomas scream. This time Dejah stopped in her tracks and turned to see a small group of feral infected swarm Thomas, dragging him to the ground.

Reaching into the pocket of his field jacket, Brooks pulled out a grenade, yanked the pin, and lobbed it into the center of the fray. Within seconds, Thomas and his murderers met their maker in a huge explosion that engulfed the nearby tents and set several hay bales on fire.

“Oh god!” Dejah screamed, and then started running. “Oh god! Thomas!”

“Daddy!” Selah sobbed, abruptly aware of what had just taken place.

“Where the hell did you get that?” David shouted over his shoulder, hands clutching Selah’s legs to keep her safely on his shoulder.

“Got them off one of Bal Shem’s henchmen,” Brooks, running, yelled in response.

Behind them, flames billowed in giant fireballs across the camp, consuming deadfall and leaves, tents and corpses. The trailers melted away like plastic toys, leaving only bare, charred metal frames. Everywhere they looked they saw the infected and the healthy locked in struggles for survival.

Ahead of them, the lake was close. The rain from the previous day had raised the water level, and ankle-deep puddles swallowed their feet.

“There! A boat tied to the pier!” David yelled, voice hoarse.

A guttural growl sounded from above. Hanging in a tree were three feral infected feasting on the rotting remains of a person they must have stowed there for safe keeping. A gray-skinned arm, swollen and rotting, fell to the ground, as the three leapt from the branch. One of the infected landed square on David’s back, knocking him forward.  As he fell, the air whooshed out of his lungs. Selah, screaming careened forward onto the ground.

“No!”  Dejah ran for Selah and snatched her up just as one of the infected trio grabbed the girl’s leg. A second zombie gripped David’s back, tearing through his clothes and digging at his flesh. The third knocked Brooks off-balance, sending one of his guns flying into the mud.

Dejah grasped Selah’s arm and delivered a swift face-kick to the creature clutching her leg.  The blow landed hard; it snapped the zombie’s neck backward and broke it.  Still alive for a few moments, its head lolled on the top of its spine like a tether ball.  She gathered Selah desperately into her arms.

David rolled over, sending his attacker off-balance.  He crab-walked backward quickly, but when he turned over to gain his footing it reached out and grabbed him again, taking him back down.

“Get to the boat!” David yelled at Dejah. Tears filled his eyes.

Gunfire raked the ground behind him and blasted his attacker.  David was suddenly free.  Brooks stood nearby, his weapon aimed at the last of the now-dead trio of feral infected.

“Y’all go on; I’ll cover you and come after!”

There was no argument.  David grabbed Selah again and sprinted. Dejah and Dr. Robbins ran, too, despite the bleeding wound of his gunshot leg.  The older man ground his teeth, keeping pace as they fled.

They reached the shoreline and crossed the pier. David jumped into the boat. He put Selah down into the center and held out his hand, pulling Dejah and Dr. Robbins into the wobbling craft. “Come on, Brooks!”

Brooks unloaded his gun into four more pursuers. The bullets took out half of them, but when the gun emptied, he turned to run for the pier. Brooks just made it onto the structure when the feral group sprang onto his back, pulling him down to the boards. Without a weapon, the four in the boat could do nothing to help Brooks at long range.

“Goddamn it, go!” Brooks screamed as the jagged talons of the gore-besmeared infected ripped his clothes and raked his flesh, opening ragged wounds. They quickly overcame him.

David scrambled to the stern of the boat and lowered the propeller into the water. Dejah slipped a life jacket over Selah’s trembling shoulders and cinched the strap tight. Robbins sat poised with oar in hand, ready to hit anything that tried to board the boat. David pulled the starter cord; the motor gave a faint whine and shuddered violently. Again he yanked the manual cord. The propellers kicked up water, shaking the fishing boat, and the engine sputtered, but died again. He checked a gauge on the side of the engine. “Damn! It’s out of gas!”

A terrifying explosion suddenly blew away part of the pier, raining boards, and wood and body parts into the air and over them. Shielding his head with one arm, Robbins threw off the rope connecting them to the now flaming pier and used his foot to shove off.

“Use the oars,” Robbins shouted, as they realized Brooks had blown up himself rather than die at the hands of the feral infected. Robbins tossed David one of the oars and began rowing.

Dejah clutched Selah to her as the men paddled as fast as they could to get away from the sinking pier. Another massive explosion plumed above the thick treeline above the camp.

“Fuel shed,” David muttered, short of breath as he paddled the boat.

The shore they left behind was peopled by roaming clusters of raging infected, but, seeing them float away, they turned their attention back toward the camp’s straggling survivors.

“Don’t slow down!” Robbins yelled, as one infected made his way successfully into the lake and began swimming toward them.

David gripped the oar tighter, and put his back into rowing.

Mist lay over the distant water. The other side of the lake was a gray line on the horizon. For all the silence and tranquility of it, it might as well have been a whole other world.

When they reached the center of the lake, they stopped paddling to catch their breath. Dr. Robbins rested his head against his oar, panting loudly. Muscles burned in his arms and back.   Dejah and Selah were still locked in an embrace in the middle of the boat. David rested his oar across his knees, propped his elbows on the oar and, eyes closed, put his face into his hands.

They stayed like that for several minutes. The boat drifted.

“Do you think they can swim this far?” Selah asked, her little voice trembling with fear, cracking and hoarse from screaming.

Dr. Robbins smiled weakly. “Doubt it, sugar. Lake’s about seventy feet deep here. Even if those damn infected bastards had the ability to swim, their minds are so confused, they’d probably forget to breathe or something and go down like a big rock.”

Selah’s eyes were wide at the suggestion.

“They’re not getting out here, Selah. Look at the fire beyond the shoreline where the camp is — probably all dead by now. I saw several of them run right into a burning tent,” David said, wiping his perspiring forehead on his shirt sleeve.

“Mommy, is Daddy dead?”

The adults in the boat exchanged glances. Dejah inhaled sharply. There was no point lying to her about what had happened. She saw the whole thing. She just needed confirmation.  Needed to hear it out loud. “Yes, sweetie. Daddy’s dead. He’s…he’s in Heaven now. Nothing can hurt him ever again.”

“I thought so,” Selah said quietly, and joined the adults in their silent contemplation of recent events and where they would go from here.

David reached into the lake and scooped up a handful of water, splashing the blood and grime and sweat from his face. He wiped the water from his eyes with the underside of his shirt.

Selah sat quietly in the boat surveying the lake around them. The water was calm in the cold autumn air with only a few ripples breaking the surface to betray where fish came to investigate. Wistfully, she leaned over the boat’s side and danced her fingers over the water. “How come there are trees in the lake?”

Dr. Robbins smiled at her question. For just a moment, he was transported a decade back in time, and was sitting on an old graying pier, on the same lake, with Kammie kicking her feet over the side, putting a plump worm on a fishing hook. The happy image dissolved from his mind almost as quickly as it had formed. He smiled at Selah. “Well, Lake Tawakoni didn’t used to be a lake at all. Back in about 1960, that’s a long time ago, even before your mom got herself born, somebody — and I don’t know who — flooded all this land with water and made this place a reservoir. That’s just a fancy word for lake. The water’s used by the cities around here.”

“It’s got a funny name,” Selah said, and reached her hand out to touch a gray, barren tree stripped of all bark poking forlornly from beneath the water’s surface.

“Named after a tribe of prehistoric Indians who used to own the land here. You can find arrowheads on the beach and stuck in trees if you look hard enough.”

“Wow.” Selah placed her chin on the edge of the fishing boat, staring into the water. She looked tired, bone weary, her body sickly thin, her hair hanging in greasy strands around her gaunt face.

Dejah brushed the hair away from Selah’s sunken eyes and tried to push the thoughts of the horrors her daughter had experienced into the dark recesses of her mind to deal with at another time and place. Thoughts of Thomas, the mixed emotions surrounding him and their failed marriage, threatened to invade her mind, but she willed them away. She didn’t have time to fall apart. They still had to survive.

David watched the fires on the other side of the trees, and then looked in all directions around their little bobbing boat. “I bet in some other time this was a good fishing hole.”

“Yep. Lake’s called the Catfish Capital of Texas. Catfish, bass, crappie, and these pesky critters we call alligator gars that look like some sort of dinosaur — all kinds of fish out here.” Robbins positioned his oar in his hand, preparing to row. “Don’t think we’ll have time for fishing today though.” He chuckled.

“Yeah, don’t imagine so.” David moved his oar into the water, pushing them toward the shore. “What’s on the other side of the lake?”

“Straight over there,” Robbins nodded as he rowed, “is a park. Next city over is Lone Oak.”

“Still Hunt County?”

“Yeah. But, here’s the good part. We cross through Hunt County, and on up through Fannin County, and then we cross the Oklahoma border. Couple hours by car,” Robbins said, as the boat bumped something hard and jumped on the water.

“Damn it!” David said.

“What was that?” Dejah grabbed Selah, pulling her close, panic spreading through her body.

“I’m sure it was just a tree,” Robbins said, and laughed to ease the tension.

They rowed the boat and it glided forward on the water. “We don’t seem to be hung up on anything,” David said, relief easing his voice.

“I told you, probably just a tree.” Dr. Robbins leaned over, bracing himself with his oar, and peered into the murky water.

A spray of cold water drenched the boat’s occupants as a massive alligator gar leapt from the icy lake and latched onto Dr. Robbins’s arm and shoulder. With his free arm, he bashed the behemoth fish with his oar.

“Holy shit!” David tried to maintain the balance of the boat by shifting his weight to the other side, compensating for the struggle with the fish. He was stunned, trying to process what he was seeing. The fish was at least six-feet-long, its awful head and tooth-lined jaws very much indeed like those of an alligator, clamping the doctor’s arm. David searched the bottom of the boat for something to fight it with, but there was nothing.  And if he walked with his oar to the back of the boat, the uneven weight would tip the craft and dump them all into the water.

“It’s infected!” Dejah shouted above the noise of the splashing water and the screams of Dr. Robbins. Selah began to scream, too, covering her face with her hands and crumpling into a fetal position on the boat’s bottom.

“Damn you!” Robbins managed to get his oar under the jagged teeth of the monstrosity, but the gar’s bite was too tight to break free. It ground through the muscle of his arm with its saw-tooth jaws.

“Use this!” David hurriedly passed his oar to Dejah who began beating the fish, but more than once hit the doctor by mistake as it deflected off slick scales.

Slipping on the slick boat floor, Robbins tried to latch onto a seat with his free hand, but couldn’t get his fingers wrapped around anything that could serve as an anchor. Dejah took another whack at the massive beast of a fish, and then the doctor lost his footing, fell backward in the air, and went over the side of the boat, dunked beneath the waters, clutched in the razored jaws of the gar.

Bubbles burst on the water’s surface, and the ripples slowly faded to calm.

They sat there, frozen in the boat.

“He’s gone,” Dejah said, after some time.

“I think so,” David replied, sorrow and exhaustion slowing his words.

Selah’s soft sobs floated over the acrid wind, the scent of burning trees and fuel stinging their nostrils. “Everyone keeps dying. Everyone’s going to be dead!”

“No. No, we’re going to make it. For now, just think about something else, baby girl. You think about Christmas and Santa Claus, and new school clothes, and strawberry scented lip gloss and anything else that makes you happy.” Dejah picked up the fallen oar of Dr. Robbins and began rowing in his stead. “We’re going to be okay. You tell yourself that. Over and over again.”

“Everything
will
be okay…once we’re on the other side of the lake.” David sounded confident. “We’ll go to Oklahoma. Get out of Texas. You’ll see, Selah; we’ll be okay.”

Dejah felt tears coursing over her dirty cheeks, blurring her vision, turning visions of crisp water and trees into a watercolor painting of earth tones. The hues of nature blended with the blackness engulfing her mind, and she heaved the oar in and out of the water, propelling the small boat toward the shoreline of the promised park, and presumed safety.

“We’re gonna be okay, baby girl,” she cooed to Selah. “We’re gonna be okay.”

THE END