The Virus Within: Secrets Unraveled (Book 5)

Ch 39: Round 'em Up!

~

Nicky hung upside down from the roof of the cage. "I'm not exactly the heaviest thing around, but I think it's sturdy enough."

The quick trip into town had let us—well, Ethan and I—load the trailer full of wire fence panels that surrounded a construction site. Wren sat outside the trailer and watched us build the long line of cages on either side of the shipping container. Had Nicky not been present, I was sure she would have come over.

"I think so too," I said. "The unranked almost never climb, so we just have to make sure the joints are secure."

Ethan examined the bands of metal he'd been wrapping around the joints. "If they manage to break loose, I think we grabbed the wrong zombies."

"Let's finish these doors and go find some unranked ferals," I said.

After coaxing Nicky out of the cage, which involved me threatening to put a feral in there with her, we dumped her by the Stronghold and drove the truck and trailer into town. It didn't take long for the zombies to surround the truck.

"The first few should be easy, but we might need to work together to shove more inside the trailer without the others pushing out the door," I told Ethan as I turned off the truck.

He jumped out of the back. "Why don't we trap them all in that yard and load them all at once?" he asked, pointing to a backyard with a chest-high chain-link fence.

"That works for me," I said. "Let's see how many unranked we can find."

The first two were easy since they came to the truck. I pushed one through the gate while Ethan just lightly tossed the other over. Two down. At least eight to go. Preferably eighteen.

We split up, tracking any non-ranked zombies we could smell. I decided the fence idea was good, and I pushed the next zombie into an open garage and closed the door. That would keep it in one spot until I found enough to make a single return trip with all in tow.

A scream from down the street gave away the location of another unranked zombie, and I went to put it in timeout. Some zombies barely smelled any different unless you passed right by them, and I had to double back a few times.

I had originally thought it would take us all day to find a dozen unranked zombies, but I was quickly proven wrong. There were clearly more around than I expected. Still, they weren't that common, and I could pass by hundreds of zombies without finding one.

An hour later, I grabbed my radio and turned it to Daniel's frequency since Ethan currently had that device in his possession. "I've found nine so far. How many do you have?"

"Thirteen. Shall we meet back at the truck?"

"Sure."

Showoff. I should have known his speed would have allowed him to travel greater distances. Shaking my head, I turned back and led the crowd down the street, pausing just long enough to free my victims and make sure they were following me.

The zombies I had disturbed on my way out were now clogging the streets and hindering my passage. I couldn't remove my sunglasses to flash my eyes in warning, nor did I dare growl at them in case my unranked followers heard it and realized I wasn't human.

I glanced over my shoulder to see hundreds staggering after me. Too many. It was hard to pick out the five unranked I'd freed so far. I opened a gate to free the unranked I'd trapped in the fence earlier and kept jogging. So many zombies were forming roadblocks that I finally jumped on top of a car and hop-scotched through the crowd, dodging the delayed arm swings of those below.