The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (31 page)

Mary Ellen was already on her way down when
he landed on the ground. "Do you see anything?" he asked
Donald.

Donald shook his head but Al could feel the
tension radiating from him. "Once we go into those trees we'll have
no way of knowing if they're coming at us."

"I know," Al said as Mary Ellen climbed off
the ladder beside him. "Make sure you keep searching above us too.
The last thing I want is one of them landing on my back."

Donald shuddered and nodded his agreement;
Mary Ellen stepped closer to the two of them when they approached
the decimated remains of the dead one the other sick had torn
apart. Al tried not to look but his gaze was repeatedly drawn back
to the torn ligaments, bones, and other body parts he could no
longer identify.

He kept his gun before him as they
cautiously approached the woods in a triangle formation with Donald
at the front. He knew it wasn't true but every step sounded louder
to him than the screeching birds that had taken flight earlier.

The
birds
…

His head tilted back but he didn't see any
of them taking flight from the trees and then, fifty feet to the
right of them a few more birds soared into the sky. The sick ones
were on the move but they weren't scaring the birds from the trees
like they had before. Had the sick split apart and were now moving
in smaller groups? He wondered as he continued to search for any
sign of the monsters in the woods with them. Had all the birds
already been frightened from their roosts?

His old ticker wasn't going to be able to
take this, he realized as they continued through the woods toward
the camp. The sick ones are smart and they all moved with such
stealth. He suspected that even if they were following behind the
group of sick people, tracking their movements, they weren't the
hunters. They never had been.

He studied the treetops but he didn't think
they would be above them, not anymore. They were luring them back
toward the camp. Luring them toward the others so that they could
take them all down at once.

"I think we're in trouble here," Donald
whispered.

"I think we are too," Al agreed.

A loud crack caused all of them to jump and
spin toward Mary Ellen. She stared back at them in dismay before
glancing down at the branch beneath her foot. "Sorry," she
mouthed.

Al took a deep breath to settle the rapid
beat of his heart. "This way." He moved toward the right so they
could begin their circle around the camp.

He kept his ears alert for any noise but he
found the utter stillness of the woods even more unnerving than the
sight of the rabid sick ones turning on their own had been. Donald
held up a hand and stopped before them. He pulled his knife free
from his holster and pressed it against the handle of his gun.

Al fell into step beside him until they
arrived at an area about a quarter mile off the back right hand
corner of the cabin. The continuous silence enshrouding the forest
troubled him even more than the fact he didn't know where the sick
humans had gone.

He grabbed hold of Donald's arm, holding him
back when he caught the soft sound of a stick breaking. Donald
turned toward him, his brow furrowed in confusion as Al held his
finger against his lips. Al strained his ears but he didn't hear
anything else. He couldn't shake the feeling there was something
out there, watching them. He pointed in the direction he'd heard
the noise coming from but as he turned to look that way something
inside of him instinctively caused his head to snap back.

He took a step away from the tree above him
as someone launched at him from the leafy branches. Throwing
himself backward Al avoided the man coming at him but he was unable
to keep himself on his feet and landed heavily upon the ground.
Shifting his hold on his gun, he grabbed for his knife as the man
launched at him.

Donald swung out, catching the man across
the cheek with a sharp right that sent him spiraling to the side
before the man could get to him. Al rolled as rapidly away as he
could and pushed himself back to his feet. Another sick person
emerged from the shadows and descended on them with the deadly
silence of an owl swooping down on a field mouse.

He held his gun and knife up before him, he
couldn't fire off a shot and risk bringing more of those things
down upon them, but he might not have a choice as the two sick ones
circled them.
Where are the other
sick?
He wondered as he kept his eyes focused on the one
who had first leapt out of the tree at him.

"What are they waiting for?" Mary Ellen
demanded.

"Backup, maybe," Donald muttered.

"I don't think they were with the other
group," Al said as he studied the two now hunting them. He tried to
recall what the main group had looked like but he was fairly
certain these two hadn't been with them.

Al adjusted his grasp on his knife as Mary
Ellen's back pressed against his. The one who had leapt from the
tree hadn't taken the landing too well, he now limped off of his
right leg. The other one was mostly focused on Mary Ellen but he
knew that if one attacked the other would be right behind it.

The one with a limp lunged for him at the
same time the other went for Mary Ellen. Al swung out with his
knife, catching the man across his chest and slicing him open.
Blood spilled forth but it did little to deter his attacker as he
kept coming straight for him. Al managed to adjust the knife and
point it upwards as he fell back onto the forest floor beneath his
crazed attacker.

The man fell on top of him; his weight drove
his body forcefully onto Al and the blade of his knife. His gun was
knocked free of his hand. Arms and legs kicked above him, flailing
as the man tried to get at him. Warm blood trickled from the
vicious gash in the man's lower sternum; it ran over Al's hand and
dripped down to plaster his clothes to his skin. Revulsion slid
through Al but he twisted the knife deeper to try and put an end to
the man's suffering as small mewls of agony escaped him.

Even with the stab wound, the man was still
determined to try and get at him. He knew these humans were able to
die but Al wondered if they processed the implications of death and
its permanency like they had before the madness ate their brains.
He believed it far more likely that with the rotting of these
people's brain, and their turn to cannibalism, these humans had
stopped processing the end of their life in the same way. Perhaps
pain didn't even register the same way to these people anymore.

Al turned his head to the side in an attempt
to avoid the hands and fingers trying to tear into his flesh. A
grunt escaped him when a fist connected with the right side of his
face and knocked his head to the side. He turned his head further
away from the man as his fingers clawed at his skin. Blood spilled
down his face from the fingernails raking at the flesh of his
cheeks.

The man above him released a small mewl. Al
twisted the knife harshly to the side and drove it further upward.
He could feel flesh rending as the knife shifted; feel the blade
scraping across rib bone. More blood poured forth to coat his hands
and clothes. Revulsion slid through his stomach, he fought back
vomit as the nearly lipless mouth above him skimmed back to reveal
the gaps in the man's rotting teeth. A black tongue slithered out,
it didn't actually slither but images of snakes was all that filled
his mind as that tongue flickered at him.

Donald appeared behind him; he lifted a
large tree branch and swung it forcefully down. The arc of the
branch caught the twisted man above him under the chin and flung
him off of Al. He inhaled a deep breath as the loss of the
bodyweight allowed him to finally drag in a ragged breath. The man
who had attacked him had been being quiet, probably so he wouldn't
have to share his meal with the others in the woods, but now he
began to make a low squealing noise that sounded even worse to Al
than nails scratching down a chalkboard.

Al rolled to his side; Donald stalked across
the clearing and deftly slid his knife across the man's throat,
finally silencing him. Al looked away from the thrashing body and
turned toward where he'd last seen Mary Ellen. She leaned against a
tree with her hands on her knees, heaving in gulps of air.

"Are you ok?" she demanded of him.

"I'm fine," he assured her. She rose and
gestured toward the blood covering him. Al barely glanced at it but
he could feel it sticking against his skin. "It's his. What of
you?"

She shook her head and glanced down at
herself. Her shirt was torn at the neckline and scratches marred
her collarbone but she was otherwise unharmed. "All good."

He didn't bother to brush the dirt off of
him but he did take the time to pull his ruined shirt off and drop
it on the ground. There was still blood on his chest but it wasn't
as much. Brushing the blood away from the scratches on his face, he
poked at the tender flesh. The gouges weren't deep but blood
continued to trickle from them.

He retrieved his gun from the forest floor
before walking over to the body slumped against the tree. He didn't
want to take his knife back but it would be extremely foolish of
him to leave behind a weapon that he would need again. Over the
years he'd considered himself many things, foolish had never been
one of them.

Resigning himself to what must be done he
bent down, grabbed hold of the handle, and wrenched it from where
it was buried deep in the man's rotten flesh. He wiped the bloody
blade off on the pine needles beneath him and kept it in hand as
they hurried through the forest again.

"Why haven't we heard screams?" Mary Ellen
inquired. "Or shouts from the camp?"

Al didn't have any answers for her as his
gaze ran continuously over the forest surrounding them. His glasses
had been scratched in the fight but he could still see well enough
to be able to spot it if another one came at them. His gaze
searched the tops of the trees; he was propelled more rapidly
forward by the driving impulse to get to the camp.

If those two had already been in the woods,
then there could be even more than the original group they'd seen.
He broke into a jog behind Donald. They made it to a place off the
right hand corner of the cabin but the building was still hidden
from view.

Caution caused him to slow again as they
walked briskly past one of the hunting stands he'd pointed out on
the first day they'd arrived here. Though he'd known where they
were, Donald still cautioned them about the newly dug traps that
he'd completed with the others this morning.
Had that really been just this morning?
Al
contemplated in disbelief. Both traps remained completely covered
by the debris and untouched, no one had come through this way
before them.

Glancing at the sky and the setting sun he
wondered if maybe Carl and the others had arrived back at the camp
already. It was getting late in the day, if everything had gone
well they should be returning around now. They had just made it to
the fishing line and alarms strung around the perimeter when the
first line began to vibrate like a plucked guitar string. He heard
the distant rattle of a can but the trigger point of the alarm was
nowhere near where they were.

He grabbed Mary Ellen when she went to run
forward. "Careful," he instructed.

"They just set off the alarms; the others
know they're coming," Mary Ellen hissed at him.

"And if we set off the alarms in this area
the sick ones will know there's someone else over here, and so will
the members of our camp. Except the people at camp won't know we're
friendly." Mary Ellen bit on her bottom lip, her face reddened in
frustration. "We'll get there but we have to get there as
undetected as possible."

She nodded and the three of them carefully
made their way past the two lines. As soon as they were free of the
lines, they broke into a brisk jog toward the camp. They'd only
made it fifteen feet when the first shout pierced the air. It was
followed almost instantly by a gunshot that reverberated through
the mountains.

Al prayed they weren't too late as he ran
toward the lake and front of the cabin. They'd had to be careful on
their approach to the cabin but had he been too cautious? If
someone died he knew it would be because of his hesitation, but
there was always a price to pay in war, he just didn't think he
could live with that price being one of the children.

Xander,

One of the men standing across from them
could have been the real life version of Yosemite Sam. In fact, he
looked so much like the cartoon character that for a minute Xander
had the disconcerting notion he had traveled to some kind of
cartoon land or that he had stepped into the world of Who Framed
Roger Rabbit. He half-expected Roger to come around the back of the
truck and whistle as he sauntered past the guys.

Xander couldn't tear his eyes away from the
bushy red handlebar mustache that hung down to the shoulders of the
man's shirt. His caterpillar eyebrows, that had been a unibrow
probably since this guy was born, were the same vibrant red as
Yosemite Sam's too. He wasn't wearing a cowboy hat but the beat up
trucker cap he wore was shoved low over his forehead. The man was
short in stature and his belly rolled over top of the belt fighting
to hold up his jeans. Even the red flannel shirt and jeans he had
on looked like something the cartoon character would have worn.

The trucker hat and the strands of gray in
his hair were the only things about him that weren't like the
cartoon. Xander half wondered if his name might even be Sam. No
matter what his name was Xander knew if they made it out of this
alive, the guy would forever be Yosemite to him. Unfortunately,
Yosemite had a rifle leveled dead center at his chest and he most
certainly wasn't a cartoon no matter how much Xander wished he
was.