The Survivors (Book 1): Summer (21 page)

"
That's perfect."  I eased myself out of the truck and onto the ground.  "See if you can find the keys; I'll go get what we need from the store."

Michael hesitated, torn by indecision about whether to follow me or do as I asked.
 I was already halfway to the store by the time he made up his mind and headed off to look for the keys.

In retrospect, I should have known better than to split up.
 I mean, in horror movies, someone always got killed when they did that.  So, guess who got the kudos for the stupidest idea of the day?  

That’s right, it was me.

The store had seen better days, but aside from a thick layer of dust things were mostly just the same as they had been left years ago.  Tarnished brass display fixtures hung on the wall, above models of sinks and shower units.  The place was small and cramped, so I was forced to pick my way carefully towards the stockroom in the back.

The door was locked.
 Undeterred, I lowered myself to my knees and drew a small set of lock picks from one of my pockets.  This lock was one of those old, simple ones, and I would have no problem opening it.  After a few minutes, it made a satisfying click and I knew I was in.  I levered myself back to my feet and switched the set of lock picks for my taser.

The door swung open to reveal a room hazy with dust, abandoned to its fate long ago.
 A quick sweeping glance reassured me there was nothing more threatening than rat droppings and the odd cockroach inside.  Despite the dust, whoever used to be in charge of this stockroom kept it well-organised and I found what I needed without difficulty.  There were a number of spare elements there as well, so I grabbed as many as I could carry.

There were a few other things that I thought might come in handy as well, so I added them to my armload of loot.
 I had no intention of coming back to this place any time soon.

Still, you never knew
.

With that thought in mind, I pulled the door closed behind me as I left, until I heard the lock click back into place.

Then, leaning heavily on my crutch with my free arm full of supplies, I hobbled back to the truck.  It took some awkward juggling to get the rear cab’s door open but somehow I managed it, and when I did I set my treasure down on the back seat.

As I was shutting the door, I realised something.
 It shouldn’t have taken that long to find the keys or to give up and come looking for me.  Where was Michael?

I froze, head tilted, listening for the telltale sound of his footfalls, or the soft hiss of his breath against the silence of our empty world.
 I heard nothing.  Hmm, that was worrying.  He should have been back by now.

I managed to take a single footfall towards the garage before the blast of a shotgun discharge shattered the mid-afternoon silence.

"Oh, fuck."  Sorry, Mum.  I picked up the pace, using my crutch like a pole to vault myself over fallen debris.  "Michael?  Michael!"  

My answer was a blood-curdling, inhuman scream.

I rounded a corner into the alley that ran behind the building, and found my friend pinned to the ground beneath the weight of a female undead, frantically trying to protect his face from her ragged fingernails.  He had the shotgun held crosswise, using it to keep her at bay, but while he was protecting himself there was no way for him to go on the offensive.

"
Sandy!"  He saw me and called my name, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he battled to keep the undead off him; her ragged nails were mere centimetres from those kind eyes that I adored.  "Sandy, run.  
Run!
"

I ignored him.

In three strides I crossed the gap between us, screaming at the undead creature until her head jerked up to stare at me.  She howled a bloodthirsty wail, mouth wide to reveal bloody jaws.

"
No, fuck
you
!" I screamed right back at her as I swung the crutch with all my might, using it like an impromptu cricket bat.

The undead flew backwards and crashed into a low wall a few feet away, but even with her skull caved in and most of her face gone, she was still trying to get up.
 I was on her before she could right herself, and jabbed the crossbar of my crutch down into her throat to pin her to the ground.   The taser was out of my pocket and crackled to life within a heartbeat, ready to deliver its high-voltage payload.

And deliver it did, when I crammed it down into the bloody socket where the creature’s face used to be.
 Electrical current surged through the its body, and made her limbs jerk convulsively as she lost control of her nervous system.

My chest heaved with exertion as I stumbled back, only to be caught by Michael's strong hands.
 Like me, he was panting, struggling to catch his breath.  Adrenaline had our hearts going at a mile a minute, and it took a second for me to notice that he was covered in blood.

"
Is that yours?"  I gasped, pointing at the stains.  He shook his head and pointed wordlessly at the jerking corpse; I nearly fainted with relief.  Then the still-living carcass distracted me.  I stared at it, not quite believing what I was seeing.  It was still trying to get up.  "Oh Christ, those aren't death throes, are they?"

Michael shook his head, rendered speechless by his brush with death.
 It came down to me, then, while he was still recovering.

"
Watch her.  If she manages to get up, shoot her."  I righted my crutch so I could use it for its intended purpose again.  It was slippery with blood and other fluids that I'd rather not have thought about, but there was only one thing on my mind and it wasn't grey matter.

I returned to the abandoned garage, and it didn't take me long to find what I needed: A bottle of methylated spirits, left behind by the former occupants.
 I imagined they had used it to clean equipment, but I had a much simpler use for it.

An impromptu cremation.

I snatched up the bottle and hobbled back to the rear of the building, where I found Michael guarding the flailing infected with focused intensity.  When he saw me coming he lowered his shotgun and hurried to meet me.  As he drew closer, he spotted the bottle in my hands and anticipated my idea.  He took the spirits and undid the cap, then upended the bottle over the writhing corpse.

Oh god, it was trying to howl, but all that came out of its shattered face was an infuriated gurgling.
 Its tongue flailed through the bloody mass that had once been a pair of jaws, disembodied and horrifying.  My gorge rose.

Thankfully, Michael had his nerve back and took care of the gruesome task for me.
 Once it was burning, we left the corpse behind us and hurried back to the front of the building, to put as much distance between us and the stench of death as we possibly could.

Back at the Hilux, Michael rounded on me with anger on his face.
 "I told you to run – why didn’t you run?  You could have been killed!"

I'd never seen him angry before, but I was too riled up on adrenaline to care.
 My back was up and I was still in fight or flight mode.  Social graces were completely out the window.

"
And I said
fuck you
!"

"
No you didn’t – you said that to her!"  He yelled, and jabbed a finger back in the direction where the creature burned.

"
Whatever– I don't even– Shut up!"  My patience was gone, and my pulse pounded deafeningly in my ears.  There was only one thing on my mind, and I needed to sate it before I went mad.

The crutch clattered to the ground when I lunged at him, taking him completely by surprise.
 He tripped, and then I had him pinned with his back up against the car before he knew what hit him.  The kiss was hot and hungry, passionate, fuelled by our recent brush with death.  It was a completely different kind of kiss to the tender taste he'd sampled earlier in the day.  It was animalistic.  I’d almost lost him before I even had the chance to get to know him, and I was furious about it.

Not at him, though.
 I was furious at myself.

It was my stupidity that almost cost this sweet, kind man his life.
 My moronic need to show him how strong and independent I was.  It was so idiotic.  I felt like a fool.

Our lips parted after a moment that seemed to last forever.
 I shoved myself back away from him, now out of breath for a completely different reason.  He stared at me, both of us still riled up but our anger was fading into… something else.

Perhaps he understood me a little bit better now, after seeing me fight to protect him.
 Even if I lacked the means to eloquently express my attraction out loud, he seemed to understand that I couldn’t have abandoned him just because he ordered it.  Like him, I would do anything to protect someone that I cared about – even if it cost me my life.

All of a sudden, it felt like we had far more in common than we initially realised.

***

It took us a while to coax some life out of the minivan, but we got it going long enough to get it back to base.

It was spluttering and making some very upset noises by the time we finally pulled into the parking garage, with me behind the wheel of the minivan and Michael in the Hilux.  Still, we were home and safe, so I’d have time to get it running smoothly before we left again.  As the gate rumbled closed behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief at being back in our nice, secure bunker again.

The relief didn't last long.
 Shortly after we disembarked, we both stopped and stared at each other, uncertain of what we were hearing.  There was a sound echoing around the bunker, a terrible sound, and it was coming from inside the building.

It took us a few moments to figure out that it was the sound of a little girl screaming in terror.

We both took off running simultaneously, though with my foot almost crippled, Michael soon drew out in front of me.  The further into the belly of the bunker we went, the worse the noises became.  Madeline's muffled screams were interspersed with those bloodcurdling yowls that were steadily becoming all too familiar to us, punctuated by the intermittent wet crash of flesh on wood.

There was another screech, followed by the sound of wood splintering, and Maddy screamed again.
 The sound was followed by an older female voice issuing orders that we couldn't quite make out:  Skylar.

Michael rounded the corner ahead of me, his shotgun loaded and aimed from the hip.
 The discharge roared in the narrow corridors and made my ears ring, but I didn’t care about the discomfort or the pain in my foot.

All that mattered right now was Maddy and my little sister.

The door the undead was beating upon was a bloody mass of splinters.  The creature was so intent on getting at the victims inside that it had torn pieces out of its own flesh as it was trying to get through.

Michael charged it, unloading the shotgun again and again, until the barrel ran dry and he was forced to stop and reload.
  The creature was taken completely by surprise by his vicious assault, and now it was on the ground with its head and shoulders churned to a bloody mess by hot shards of metal.  His attention was completely focused on it, so I turned mine towards our family.

Through the door, I could hear Maddy crying and the sound of someone in pain.

"We're here – is everyone alright?"  I shouted, leaving Michael to vent his temper on the creature he had cornered.

"
Sandy?  Oh, thank god."  It was Skylar's voice, and I felt a surge of relief.  There was the sound of moving furniture, then the door flew open and Skye was suddenly in my arms, hugging me tight around the neck.  I hugged her back and did a quick headcount, finding everyone alive and accounted for.

Alive, but not necessarily well.

Ryan was groaning on the bed, bleeding badly from several nasty cuts across his chest and left arm.  The fact that they were not yet stitched and bandaged told me all I needed to know.  Skye and the doctor had barricaded everyone inside the room, and they'd dedicated all of their strength to keeping that terrible undead thing out.

There wasn't much left of it now.
 I released Skye and turned my attention to Michael.  I moved up behind the former police officer and grabbed his forearm before he could unleash another shot into the bloody mound of flesh.  His eyes darted towards me, wild and full of bizarre, mindless berserker rage.  I somehow instinctively knew that the emotion wasn't directed at me, but rather that something snapped inside his mind.  I stared back at him, keeping my gaze level and unflinching, and my voice soft and soothing.

"
You're wasting ammunition."

He blinked and stared at me, then looked at the undead thing.
 It was shredded by a dozen blasts of buckshot, its body reduced to a few twitching limbs, its torso all but liquefied.  He nodded dumbly and handed his shotgun to me, then began the gory process of picking up the writhing limbs from the puddle of body parts.

Now there was a sight that I prayed I would never have to see again.
 I could only be thankful that the face on that corpse didn’t belong to someone that I cared about.