Lazlo ran up behind us, already out of breath, and we hadn’t even left yet. Before leaving, I found Blue talking with London. He once again reminded us that we were free to stay on, and I encouraged both Lazlo and Harlow to take him up on that.
London offered to help us out. He gave us another shotgun and some ammunition, and then he gave us the best gift ever: a vehicle. They had stockpiled several cars and trucks, and he figured they could spare one. Admittedly, it was a beaten up old station wagon with brown paneling, but it was much better than walking.
The car was hidden in an old carriage house in the woods behind the compound. The marauders had a tendency to damage or take anything they wanted, so London and Sam stored and hid anything of value. They rarely used vehicles anyway, since it made them more conspicuous to marauder attacks.
Sam led us through the intricately linked hallways, so we exited through an entirely different set of doors than the ones we came in. Like the cellar doors, a few strategically placed bushes all but blocked the doorway.
When I slid by, the branches stung at my skin, making me acutely aware of the ramifications of having an open wound. I had gone out first, after Sam, and I pushed the branches back with my arm, waiting until everyone else made their way out.
A startling chill nipped at the air, the first real chill I’d felt in our travels. Time moved differently than it had before, but fall had to be arriving. Dense fog settled around us, making it hard to see, and everything I heard sounded muffled and far away. The circumstances weren’t ideal for an escape plan, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.
“It’s over that way,” Sam pointed to an area to the east of us. With the fog, the trees looked like shadows, since I could only see the silhouettes. “In those trees.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Harlow asked.
“I’ve got things to do,” Sam replied noncommittally. Maybe that was true, but based on his quick exit back into the compound, I bet he felt it too. Something just felt… off. Like an electricity in the air. Uneasiness seemed to set in, and even Blue didn’t look right.
We walked towards the car, and I tried to pretend like nothing felt strange to me. But we moved in a huddled mass, and at a much slower pace. Part of that was because we were unfamiliar with the unstable terrain. Broken bottles, car parts, random garbage, even a dead zombie or two littered our path to the carriage house.
“How far away is this thing? I’m getting cold,” Harlow said. I glanced down at her and saw her bony knees were covered in goose bumps.
“Almost there,” I said as if I really knew. The closer we got to the trees, the farther away they seemed to be. The fog created an unnerving optical illusion. “It wouldn’t kill you to wear pants.”
“Just because the world is full of zombies doesn’t mean I need to dress like one,” she shot back, and Lazlo laughed under his breath.
“She has a point,” Lazlo agreed. I would’ve glared at him, but I heard something and stopped short. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Shh,” Blue held up his hand and cocked his head, listening.
I held my breath as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Harlow’s breath came out in shallow rasps, and from the corner of my eye, I saw her slide her small hand into Lazlo’s. For his part, he scanned the area around us.
Then I heard it. A low, hollow rumbling, but the blanketing effect of the fog and the echoing from the trees made it impossible to tell where it was coming from or how far away. It came again, this time louder, and another one joined in. They were death groans, and they were increasing in decibel and number.
“Here.” I pulled my gun out. I flicked off the safety and handed Lazlo the ammunition clip, praying he knew how to use it.
“What?” Lazlo’s eyes widened, but I didn’t have time to explain.
Blue had a shotgun London had given us, and Harlow had the handgun. That left me the only one unarmed, but the branch on the bush had left a nasty scratch down my arm, a thin line of blood on my tanned skin. Chances were I wouldn’t make it out of a zombie fight uninfected, so I didn’t want to waste a gun on a lost cause.
I grabbed a long, bent pipe from the ground. It had belonged to a car, but right now, it looked strong and heavy enough to ward off a few zombies. I took another step forward, with Blue and Lazlo flanked close behind me.
As if materializing in front of us, the dark, lurching shadows appeared in the gray fog.
One of them came into view where I could actually see its eyes, all swollen and yellow. But once I could see it, it could see me. It gave a long, low howl, and then charged toward me, moving at the crazy speed that only a newly turned zombie was capable of. Lazlo fired his gun, and astonishingly, it hit the zombie right in the chest.
Lazlo may have killed one zombie, but we had been spotted.
Harlow couldn’t aim at all, so I positioned myself directly in front of her. When a zombie ran at me, I swung the pipe like a baseball bat. Its head, which should’ve been cracking bone, squished more like a rotting pumpkin two weeks after Halloween. An eyeball shot out, flying into Lazlo’s chest, where it landed with a sickening splat.
Harlow started screaming, and I’d only killed one zombie.
“Get to the car!” I shouted at her.
Lazlo and Blue shot at anything that came our way, but the zombies just kept on coming. I remembered what it had been like at the army quarantine, when there had been an endless supply of zombies that had managed to take out a whole troop of soldiers.
Another zombie lurched towards me, and I jabbed the pipe straight through its chest, slamming it down onto the ground. Its swollen tongue lulled out of its mouth, and it spit foamy saliva at me.
I stood on its stomach to leverage myself when I yanked the pipe out, and its belly squished under my foot. When I did pull the pipe out, an enlarged, greenish heart came attached at the end.
I would’ve taken the time to marvel at how disgusting that was but I heard Lazlo cursing behind me. More importantly, I heard him but not the gun. I whirled around to see Lazlo, trying desperately to reload the gun, as two zombies made their way towards him.
The first of the zombies only had one leg, and the other zombie looked like it was dying, so he had a small window of time. Blue and Harlow had backed off, heading towards the carriage house, and didn’t see how close Lazlo was to being eaten.
I raced over to him with a fat zombie at my heels. I stopped abruptly, shoving the pipe out behind me. The zombie couldn’t think to stop and impaled himself on it. Unfortunately, it only stabbed into his enormous gut, slowing him down but not killing him.
The thing about zombies, and this one in particular, is that they didn’t look fat so much as swollen. Like someone had taken a normal sized person, and then pumped them full of water so their skin stretched like a bloated animal carcass.
From the wound around the pipe, the zombie’s belly drained that weird greenish, sludgy blood, along with some other liquid that reminded me of runny pus. Without thinking about how disgusting the mess would be, I slashed the pipe along his stomach, slicing him open.
It was like popping an overgrown zit. Liquid sloshed out of him, and I jumped back to keep from getting it on me. I’m not sure if the zombie was dead, but he fell to the ground, and for now, that was good enough for me.
When I turned back to Lazlo, the older, dying zombie towered over him. Its face has shriveled beyond gender recognition, its eyes sunken almost completely in. It opened its mouth, preparing to chew off Lazlo’s face, and even though it only had four or five good teeth, they were long and sharp. Lazlo, being a complete genius, was still trying to fix the gun.
I chucked my pipe at the zombie, throwing it like a spear. Had it been human or even a newer zombie, the pipe would’ve cracked the skull and ricocheted off. But because this one was so old, and its bones and muscles had started to gelatinize, the pipe tore through its head. Brain matter, blood, and bits of gooey skull splattered all over Lazlo, who covered his head and cringed.
“Move, you idiot!” I shouted. The one-legged zombie was hopping over to finish the job.
“The gun-” He held out to me, all slick with zombie viscera now.
“If it doesn’t shoot, then hit them with it!”
To demonstrate, and to save our lives, I took it from him and swung at the zombie coming towards us. This one was a lot younger, and it clearly looked like a man. A man who had very recently had his leg torn off from the knee down. So when the butt of the gun came in contact with his head, it did little more than stun him.
I slammed the butt of the gun in his chest, and he lost his balance and fell back onto the ground. He reached out with his yellowed talon-like fingers, but I narrowly dodged them.
When he was on the ground, I flipped the gun, and using the barrel, I drove it into his eye socket. The instant the gun smashed into his brain, the zombie stopped reaching for me. He twitched, then stopped moving completely.
“Thanks,” Lazlo breathed.
“You have to learn how to fight better.”
“Hey, we did pretty good!” He gestured to the seven or eight zombies that he and Blue had managed to shoot. “The gun just jammed or something.”
“If the gun jams, you find another way to kill them.”
I couldn’t see any other zombies around, but I heard a faint death groan. Harlow and Blue had disappeared into the fog. The gun was a complete mess, with brains and goo clogging up the barrel, and it might’ve jammed before that. I left it behind and started hurrying ahead.