Surge (63 page)

“Are you serious?” Cory snaps and glares at the shivering girls in the trunk.

He looks like he wants to jump back there and strangle the pair of them. And here I was saying that Marissa wasn’t so bad just a few days ago. Please, that selfish bitch is no better than Kelly. Same goes for the red haired airhead who does nothing more than snap bubble gum.

“Yes I’m serious,” John spits out. “We would have been back an hour ago, but they kept running off to grab more stuff. It only ended when Carlos and I threw them over our shoulders and carried them out. That’s when the screaming started and attracted every goddamn wheezer in the district.” He pauses to glare at the rear view mirror. “I hope you’re glad that you lost half your shit to your own stupidity.”

“What?” Chelsea wails.

“That’s right, we had to drop half the bags to carry you both out,” Carlos confirms from the passenger seat beside John, and the wailing picks up. “All of that precious make up and stripper shit was left behind during our sprint to the car.”

“Why!” Chelsea screams and starts crying in earnest. If I thought Kelly had a set of ear drum piercing pipes on her, Chelsea’s wailing cry blows it away.

“Shut the fuck up!” Oscar shouts.

“B-but my s-stuff!” Chelsea screams. “G-go b-back J-Jonathan.”

“Hell no!” John yells his refusal. “You two were told to grab shit
quickly
and get the
fuck
out. And, what did you do? You snuck out the back and had us searching for your stupid asses for an hour. Then, what do you do when we finally find you? You start screaming that you aren’t going anywhere until you get every single thing that you
‘absolutely, positively couldn’t live without!’
”
John’s mocking high pitch grates further on my nerves. I’m seriously contemplating tossing them and their shit out of the van, so that they could hoof their way to a new group and safe house.”

“How the hell did you possibly live this long without an eyelash curler?” Carlos asks. “I mean, that is a lifesaving tool that could have stopped the end of the fucking world, if it just so happened to have fallen into the right hands.”

“I n-need it,” Chelsea snivels.

“For what?” John demands. “Is it going to kill a wheezer? Is it going to help Olivia breathe? Stop world hunger? What the fuck could you possibly do with it?”

“Curl my lashes!” Chelsea screams.

“You don’t have any freaking lashes, you redheaded stepchild!” Carlos retorts.

“I do too!” Chelsea counters. “And they’re quite long. Aren’t they, Marissa?”

“No!” Marissa screeches.

“What do you mean
‘no’
?” Chelsea demands. “You were the one that said that you envied their length and fullness half an hour ago.”

“No!” Marissa screeches again. Hold the fucking phone, Marissa doesn’t screech. I turn in time to see her eyes roll back and her body convulse.

“What the fuck!” Oscar shouts and goes for his knife. Marissa stops convulsing after a few seconds, with drool running down the side of her mouth and her whole body lies motionless on the seat. Chelsea pokes her.

“Marissa?” Chelsea asks quietly. “Are you alright?” She pokes the girl beside her again. “Answer the question, are my eyelashes long and full, or not? John doesn’t believe me, and Carlos thinks that I’m a stepchild, whatever that is. I mean, I wasn’t adopted.” Chelsea pauses. “At least I don’t think so. Does anybody know how I could tell?” When no one answers the ditz, Chelsea pushes Marissa again. “Ma-ris-sa! Wake up! No one will answer me, and I’m talking to you!”

“Don’t fucking touch her,” Danny orders. I’ve never heard him swear like that before. When he pushes my sister toward the front, and pulls out his gun, I kind of like the kid.

“Marissa, you alright honey?” Whitney’s voice asks uncertainly.

In answer red eyes flash open and she shrieks when she lunges for Chelsea’s neck. Sinking her teeth into the flesh, Marissa pulls back with a mouthful of bloody skin, while Chelsea screams in horror.

“You’re hurting me!” Chelsea shrieks.

Chelsea begins smacking her hands at the head savaging her neck. Marissa pays no mind to the feeble defense, as she chomps the flesh down and growls when she swallows. Retreating back slightly, Marissa pulls back an arm and punches a fist into Chelsea’s stomach. When her hand comes back out, it’s drenched in blood and holding some kind of organ in a tight fist. Raising it to her mouth, she bites into like a candied apple.

Danny stands up and shoots his gun, but it misses, when Marissa abandons her snack and dives over the seat. Following her flash of brightly colored clothing, I watch her land on Mike. My ears are ringing from the close quartered gun shot, as I pull out my hunting knife, and begin to climbing over the three rows of seating that are dividing me from Marissa. I see Mike as he punches her in the chest, and tries holding her teeth away from him.

Oscar is pushing people out of the way to get at the infected chick attacking the group in the back, while Mike manages to push her off and tries to hold her down. But the infected gain in strength due to the animal blood coursing through their veins, so Marissa’s able to break the hold. Using her legs, she maneuvers them under Mike and kicks him across the van. The car swerves from the impact of Mike’s 190 pound frame smashing into the window on the opposite side at full force.

“Fuck!” John shouts.

Leaping to her feet, Marissa hisses and bares her bloody teeth. There’s green slime now oozing out of her nostrils, her nose looks like it was powdered with Chelsea’s blood, and she’s leaning on her red knuckles, as she picks her next victim. I’m within range so I make a jump for her, just missing her body; but nicking her leg with the sharp blade of my knife, when she bounds forward.

Marissa pays no mind to the wound, she jumps over the tops of two rows of seating, dodging swings from Oscar’s club and Tommy’s bat. I watch in horror as she crashes into Leonard, and it’s a blur of cut scenes on mute. Marissa’s bloody hands gripping both sides of Leonard’s face, her head springing forward, mouth opening wide, and teeth ripping his throat out before he even knew what hit him. Sound returns and the slow-mo ends, when the blood sprays at an angle from the wound and I feel it sprinkling on my face like rain drops. The ceiling takes the brunt of the blood bath, but there’s some splattered on the window behind Leonard’s flailing head.

“N-no!” I hear Tommy exclaim and see him dive at her.

Since Marissa’s distracted during her feast on his grandfather, Tommy’s able to catch her in a tackle. The force dislodges her from Leonard’s throat, but she doesn’t go without a consolation prize; a mouthful of dripping flesh clenched between her teeth. Tommy pins her with his knees, much the way Olivia taught us to, before he reaches into the back of his jeans. Coming up with his gun, he puts it to her forehead and doesn’t even flinch when he pulls the trigger and is spattered with brain matter and blood. Using his sleeve, he brushes the blood away from the side of his face and neck. The chunk of Leonard that Marissa was chewing on as if it were cud, drops from her lifeless teeth with a wet plopping sound when it lands on the carpet.

Out of my peripheral vision, I see Oscar dive for Chelsea just as her body starts convulsing. There’s blood streaming from her nose and eyes, covering her already bloody white blouse with another dose of red dye. She’s stopped shaking, when Oscar finally makes it to her body. He doesn’t wait for her to come back and start attacking, he immediately sinks his knife into her eye socket and the body goes still. Removing his knife, Oscar wipes the blade across her pant leg to clean it, before sliding the knife back into his holster. Sitting beside Chelsea’s body, he pulls his blood soaked shirt off and tosses it over her face. Using his clean undershirt, he wipes his forehead clean of sweat and gore.

“John, pull this fucking car over!” Carlos demands.

Carlos’s pushing everyone away from the carnage, so I climb back to the front to scoop Olivia off the floor before she gets stomped on. She’s staring wide eyed at the back, and frozen stiff as I pick her up. I place her gently in the passenger seat to get her as far away as possible, before she starts having a panic attack which doesn’t bode well with her current condition. It’s after about thirty seconds of deceleration that John finally manages to pull the van over to a screeching halt on the side of the road. I immediately pull the slider open and hop out.

“Everyone out.”

Before the words are completely out of my mouth, I see a crush of people all shoving to get the fuck out as soon as possible. Sarah and Danny are first, and they run a dozen feet away before stopping to check each other out for injuries, with Morris meowing in his carrier at their feet. Carlos carries an unconscious Mike out, with Whitney trailing after them. Akio jumps out next to follow the trio, and to see to Mike’s injuries. That leaves Oscar inside the back with Tommy, Leonard and the bodies. I open the front door and carry a still stiff Olivia over to Carlos.

“Watch her,” I say and point at Olivia. I’m guessing that it was the gunshot that made her freeze like she did out front of our condo, but I can’t stop and ask her right now, no matter how much I may want to.

Carlos nods, before stepping closer to Olivia and pulling out his gun. I look at her to see if she’s alright, but she waves me toward the van to say,
‘just go already.’
Jogging back to the slider, I see Tommy unhooking Leonard to pull him from the van. Stepping forward, I stick my arms out for him to pass Lenny to me, but Tommy shakes his head and hops out with his grandfather cradled in his arms. I know it’s not good when I see a trail of blood following after them, and decide to I stick with him.

Tommy only goes about a dozen feet, before collapsing on the ground and heaving out sobs on Leonard’s chest. Even before I see the black jacket wrap around Tommy’s shaking form, I knew was Olivia there. She couldn’t sit by and let Tommy go through the pain alone, it’s not in her nature. But what’s in my nature, is to protect; meaning that I have to remove the two of them from the corpse before it comes back supercharged with Gene K.

“Olivia,” I begin softly. She must not hear me, so I clear my throat and try again louder. “Livia.” This time her tear filled eyes meet mine. “I need to...” I shake my knife and jerk my chin at the body. I can see she understands even though it pains her to, when she gives me a curt nod and pulls back from Tommy. She mouths something to him, and Tommy shakes his head rapidly.

“Tommy, I don’t want to do this, but I can’t have him come back and attack the group,” I say in as polite a tone as possible. “Leonard wouldn’t want that.”

“I-I..” he chokes on a sob before swallowing. “I a-alread-dy di-did it.”

I glance at the body and see the gash across Lenny’s throat from Marissa, and then a gunshot to his forehead that Tommy’s referring to. I nod and pat his back as he clings to Olivia. It sucks, but if my loved one had to be put down, I’d want to be the one to do it too. Hopefully, I’m never in that situation, but in this world, anything’s a possibility regardless of how much you don’t want to think that it is. Leaving them to share their grief, I walk over to check on Mike. Akio’s ripped his shirt off and is listening to his heart, but what my main concern is that he didn’t get bit or scratched when he was fighting off Marissa.

“What’s his status?” I ask. Akio doesn’t pause in his assessment as he answers.

“No bites or scratches,” he answers and I huff out a relieved breath. Three down in one day is too many already. “But there’s definitely a contusion to the back of his head. Most likely from the impact, so I’d expect a concussion when he wakes up.”

After hearing Mike’s satisfactory condition, I pat Whitney’s shoulder on the way by, and head back to the van. As I approach the car, I can see that John and Oscar are attempting to remove the bodies and are currently maneuvering Chelsea’s corpse from the slider. I jog over and give them a hand.

“Stupid,” John hisses. “I’m so fucking stupid.”

John drops his end of the body as soon as he’s clear of the van, and walks away a few steps to pull on his hair; I help Oscar drag the body further away. Jerking my chin at the van, we leave John to his venting, and Oscar helps me pull out Marissa. I avoid looking at what she’s become, as I set her down next to Chelsea and spin away. Oscar does the same, heading toward Carlos.

I head in the opposite direction to check on John, since he’s obviously taking this badly, and who wouldn’t? We just watched people we’ve been living with for months eat each other. Some of us knew them as friends, but John was intimate with two of them. He might not have loved them, but he cared for them to some extent. Nearing his spot, I hear that he’s still muttering about how stupid he is, so I stop a few feet away from him. He must hear me, because he turns and meets my eyes with a mixture of guilt and anger in his brown ones.

“I should have fucking left them there,” he snaps. Knowing that his anger is being used to cover what he’s really feeling, I stay silent to let him get it all out. “Should have let them spend the rest of their miserable lives surrounded by the only things they cared about, fucking useless bull shit. Instead, what do I do? I drag their materialistic asses out of the stores, and carry the infection straight into our van.”

“You didn’t know that she was infected,” I point out. John shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he says with a voice filled with hate aimed at himself. “I hand delivered them to the safety of the van. I put them in the position to attack more deserving members of our group. And I put Olivia, Cory, Oscar, Tommy and you in danger when I left you all behind to make sure that they didn’t get attacked.” He barks out a short laugh. “Too bad they were already fucking attacked.”

“John, you didn’t know,” I insist. “Marissa obviously knew that she was bit, and didn’t say anything. Chelsea must have seen it, and she didn’t mention a word. What the hell were you supposed to do? You thought that you were escorting defenseless people to safety.”

“It doesn’t matter,” John says as he shakes his head. “Leonard is dead, Mike’s as good as, and Olivia will probably be in a few days.” I lunge forward and grab his collar.