Z Children (Book 2): The Surge (6 page)

* * *

VIRGINIA

“How
long will this take?” I couldn’t keep the nervousness out of my voice and I
knew I wasn’t instilling any confidence in Bonnie. We were standing in the damn
open. Ranger was
not
happy about it. and neither was I.
Jesus, who
the hell is the adult in this scenario? The kid’s got more guts than I do. I’m
a middle-aged woman, for Christ’s sake. Act like it.

“I’ve
never done this before, Gin. How am I supposed to know? We’re sitting here
sucking fuel through a sink hose and filling Clorox and milk jugs. It’s not
like I’m a wizard who can wave his wand and magically put fuel from one vehicle
to another. We just need to keep doing it until we have enough.”

I
could hear her aggravation with me. It made my neck hairs rise in indignation,
but I can also understand. “I know, I know. God, I’m sorry. I’m just being a
nervous nelly.”

“I’m
the kid. Shouldn’t I be the one acting all fidgety and scared?” She rolled her
eyes at me and exchanged a filled jug for an empty one. “If we separate and you
start taking these to the Hummer, then we could get it done faster.”

“No.
We aren’t separating.” The thought of not being together, that scared the
living hell out of me. I was worried for myself, of course, but I wouldn’t let
anything happen to this little girl—yellow-bellied coward that I was. Maybe
that’s the real reason I disliked war—I was never brave enough to put myself on
the line, to face what could be the long kiss goodnight. I looked down at the
ground, mildly ashamed, but more than anything, settling into the acceptance
that I’d never be someone like JW. I could only be me, as brave as Virginia
Lynn could be. I’d faced death, been the cause of death. I’d saved people, kept
kids healthy. There was sort of a hero buried inside of me. I could rise to the
occasion now. Be better than I was.

Focusing,
I looked at the three jugs left to fill before we had to trek over and empty
them to start again. At least we had the shopping cart so we didn’t have to
make more than one trip to take them all. It was pure luck that it had been on
the side of the street, full to the brim with empty recyclables—some of which
we were able to add to the jugs we’d salvaged and emptied from the hotel to
fill with gas—and two unopened jars of cat food. Maybe a homeless person’s
haul? Whoever it was from, for whatever reason it was left behind, I was
grateful.

“Okay.
It’s not like I want to, but you want to get his done as quick as possible.
There isn’t another way.”

“We.
Are. Not. Separating, Bonnie.” I moved closer to her and bent down so that my
body was a protective shield…not that there was anything around to protect her
from right now, but it made me feel less cowardly, like I had a little touch of
bravery in my body. God, I never thought of myself as someone who’d be so
irrational and fearful in a bad situation. I’d worked in ERs before, why
couldn’t I muster up that kind of response and resolve out here? Even with that
family, The Gadsons—my mind flashed back to the Mormons who thought the good
book would save them—I’d had some thought to try and help them. Of course, in
the end, I’d tucked tail and run.
Definitely not cut out for the military
.

“Fine,
fine. No separating. But I’m not a baby, you know. I can manage.” Bonnie’s
voice was a bit sullen, but there was a touch of something else also.
Gratefulness perhaps? Grateful that the world wasn’t so gone that she had to
completely stop being a kid.

I
watched as she exchanged containers again. To feel useful, I transferred the
full ones into the buggy. Eight, with three more that still needed filling. “I
know you can, Bonnie. But…well, let’s just say that I can’t.”

She
nodded, accepting my words as truth. And, they were in a way. I’d moved to
Texas, started a new life on my lonesome, opened up a practice, been as
independent as you could get. But now, in the middle of this cannibalistic psycho-infested
landscape, I did not want to be independent. I wanted to be decidedly dependent—with
someone else ensuring my safety.

When
the last jug was filled, Bonnie and I stood for a moment and looked at the
cart. Eleven gallons. I had no idea if that would fill the hummer. Jesus, that
wasn’t even enough to fill a normal SUV, let alone the beast of a Guard
vehicle. What I did know was that we shouldn’t risk a second trip. We just had
to get across town and find out if JW was alive; and, if he was, whether or not
he’d found Chris. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing that explosion, though. My gut
told me not to hope, my heart said JW was okay and the love of my life was
alive.

Alive-alive.

Not a
rotting corpse trying to live.

I
tried to push away the mental image that cropped into my head now—Chris as a Z
adult. I wasn’t successful, and it seared into my brain like a hot branding
iron touching cow flesh. Then, thankfully, Ranger let loose a snarl that was
familiar. A snarl that meant trouble was coming and we better start running for
our lives. I turned away from the cart slowly and I saw what he’d seen. My
blood went cold, icicles in my veins. There definitely wouldn’t be a second
trip for more fuel.

“Bonnie,
we need to leave with what we got.”

“Gin,
I don’t think this will be enough to—”

“Bonnie
we need to LEAVE NOW!” My words sliced across hers and she stopped midsentence,
hearing the urgency in my voice. I pulled the charging handle back on the M-16
and tried to recall JW’s quick instructions before he’d left the hotel. He had
said when in trouble switch it to full auto, hold it tight, and light it
up…then run like hell. It was okay to be nervous, but if it came to it, hold it
like you mean it and pull the damn trigger. I held it like I meant it.

 “Get
the cart and run, Bonnie, NOW!”

The Z
kids, so unbelievably fast and focused, were suddenly bounding over parked
cards and hopping guardrails. In their wake the Z adults were shuffling at a
much slower speed. But they were still deadly…they’d still bite and pass
whatever virus was spreading like wildfire across the world.

The
world.

If we
couldn’t put this fire out, stop the Z contagion from spreading, then the
entire world would fall into a cannibalistic chaos. And what would they do?
Once all the living had been changed? What would they feed on?

My
brain kept thinking of the forest, but my body was focused on the trees—the
here and now predicament that we were in. Me, a little girl, and a dog—we three
against dozens of monsters that wanted nothing more than flesh. Ranger moved in
front of me, between my body and danger.

Bonnie
was still frozen, not moving. “Run!” I pushed the girl and she reflexively
gripped the handle of the cart and jolted forward. I did not follow her
immediately.

Instead,
before following Bonnie and her cart of fuel, I did what JW had instructed—I
put the gun on full auto, held it firmly, and depressed the trigger.

* * *

JW

“Out
of the frying pan and into the fire!” was the old saying, and it became a
full-on reality when I exited the stairwell and entered Chris’s floor.

They were
everywhere. Bald Z kids, disturbingly thin Z kids, Z doctors, Z nurses, a Z
janitor, and a Z priest. All present, accounted for, and wanting one thing—to
kill me nice and dead. That wasn’t going to happen today, or any day if I had a
say—I’d put a fucking bullet in my own brain before I let one of them take a
chunk out of me. I had to rely on the one thing that always got me
through—anger, mad dog rabid anger. Anger at the world and the orders I’d
followed, anger at the Z’s, anger that my life had led to this, and anger that
my dog wasn’t with me. If there was any time I needed Ranger, it was now.

The
adrenaline surged through me and put me on a drug-like high that sent my
precision into overdrive. All the training, all the experience, and all the
fury in one tightly-controlled weapon on the brink of explosion. I wasn’t worried
about being heard anymore. There were too many of them for that. I had to just
take shot after shot in quick succession, transferring weapons instead of
reloading and then reloading with quick movements when every weapon’s reserve
was spent.

When
you’re in that zone—the killing zone that is like tunnel-vision—dropping bodies
happens at super human speed.

Mere
moments, and the floor was littered with the truly dead. As the last one
advancing towards me fell, I found myself pleasantly surprised at how the old
Colt M-16 had performed so admirably.

Then I
really looked at the carnage, and any pleasantness derived from a good weapon
faded. It was like a B-rated combat movie. Blood was everywhere, buckets of it,
along with broken glass, and body parts. I had learned a couple of things about
the Z children over the past few days. They hesitated and were calculating,
picking the best tactics to win their prey. The adults were different—they
didn’t always engage unless a Z child was around and some of them…some of them
just seemed damned harmless. Like the Z adult in the window acting as if he was
trying to warn me. I tried not to think about that too much; it would make it
harder to shoot them.

I’d
learned to use the Z children’s tendencies. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t give them
a chance to think, to organize, to calculate. And I always took the Z adults
down last if I could. The children, fast and with mental acuity, were the
actual threat. I could be faster, smarter, if I followed my gut instincts and
stuck to training. Getting inside my head was bad, but my gut had never led me
wrong.

I dropped my pack and exchanged my two empty M-16 mags
for two fresh ones.
There was comfort in the routine of this—of
maintaining my supply, handling my weapons. The wing had gone eerily silent, so
I needed that comforting movement. I’d expected more Z’s to show up swiftly,
considering how much noise I had made clearing the hall. But there was…nothing.
That didn’t sit well with me. It maintained my body’s production of fresh adrenaline;
it assaulted my nerve endings, keeping them like live-wires above a water
puddle.

Where
are they? Fuck, I need Ranger.
I couldn’t remember the last time I was this
deep in the shit without my backup. Sometimes I forgot how dependent I was on
Ranger. Two halves of a damn whole by this point. Finished reloading, I raised
my weapon and surveyed the area around me—not that I wasn’t listening and
checking the whole time I was stationary. You can’t let your guard down, not in
this sort of FUBAR’d situation.

There
was more to this hospital level than this one wing.
Where the hell are the
rest of the monsters?
Slowly, I started to move through the wing, this time
leading the way with the rifle. If anything came at me, it wouldn’t get very
close. Room-by-room, I searched until I came to the wing’s exit to the next
section. I stood there for the longest time, looking at the damn door and not
knowing what to do. A sign: Closed for renovations. It was a black and white
sign from the fates that couldn’t be ignored.

There
wasn’t gonna be a Chris.

Not
here. Not in “closed for renovations” with all of these brain-eating
sons-of-bitches roaming everywhere. Even if she was somewhere here and I
managed to find her, I’d have to keep my promise to Virginia and end it
quickly. A quick bullet to the head. I’d end whatever part of her still existed
inside of the Z adult walking corpse. I had buried myself knee-deep in hell and
high water for a rescue that wasn’t going to happen. Not in anyone’s wildest
dreams or delusional hopes.

“This
is total bullshit,” I mumbled as I turned back to the ward. “What the hell
now?”
I’d ignored my own common sense, fated myself to certain goddamn
death…all because of a lesbian doc
—my thoughts are cut off by a voice. A
woman’s voice—timid and low.

“Are
you the rescue team?”

I spun
around, flipping the gun’s selector switch off safe as I did. The woman that
was peeking through the doors to the wing under construction almost fell down
trying to get out of the sightlines of my weapon.

“Don’t
shoot!” she screamed

“Idiot,
you want to bring every Z in the area down on our heads? Why the fuck would you
scream? I’m not gonna shoot you,” I responded, wary of the way her scream kept
echoing down the hall, like it would never be silenced.

Regaining
my composure after her surprising appearance, I looked her up and down. She had
the door fully open and was leaning against it, her body pressed against the
cool metal like it would shield her.

“That
door ain’t gonna shield you from shit.” Her face crumpled like she might cry. A
badge on her shirt was half-obscured by blood. Christin—blood splatter in the
middle—stings. My eyes widened, not believing. “Fuck, are you Chris?”

It was
turn for her eyes to widen. “Yes…how the hell do you know my name?” Chris
stammered and I knew it wasn’t facing the barrel of my gun that had her
shivering now.

“Virginia
sent me. And we got to get the hell out of here, woman.”

When I
said Virginia’s name—who was apparently the love of this chick’s life—she
shrunk away from me. “You…what…Virginia? But who are you? I don’t know you…”
She started to go backwards, retreat into the construction zone.

Remembering
what was in my pocket, I held a hand up to stop her. “Wait, I can prove it if
you don’t believe me.” Digging for the ring, I pulled it out and held it up.
“See? Virginia. Woman you love. She sent me here and I risked my ass and you
are
going to shut up, shape up, and follow me out of here or I’ll punch out
your lights and drag you by the scruff of your damn neck, you stubborn-ass
split tail.”