Merman - Romance

Chapter 14

He didn’t need his mind reading skills to figure out what Linda was thinking.  She was thinking that if they tossed the kid back to the mob the zombies would all be so busy fighting over getting a piece of him that she would be able to escape.

“We can’t outrun them!”  Linda’s breathless voice insisted but this time her appeal was aimed at Kent.  Pete glanced up just briefly at Ridec, fear in his eyes.

“If you’d stop talking and run maybe you wouldn’t fall behind so much,” Jessell suggested.

“How long can we run?  An hour?  Three hours?  We’re going to get tired and zombies don’t get tired.  They only have to wear us out.  We have to do something.  We can’t dare fight them hand to hand with knives, their very numbers will overwhelm us,” Linda went on.

“This hill, this hill…”  Jessell was racing up the side of a hill Ridec was struggling to keep up to her with Pete in tow.

“Look.”  It was Kent that uttered the word with so much relief in it that everyone stared down the hill.

“It’s a building, we’ve got to get to it; maybe it will offer us some cover.”  Jessell was speaking but she was already making her way down the side of the hill bushes and brambles slashing against her body but she wasn’t slowing down and she wasn’t allowing Ridec to slow down either.

“Aaaarrrggghhhh!”  Linda tumbled forward, her foot flipped over her head and down again, she caught Pete on the leg in her roll and he stumbled forward too drawing Ridec, Jessell and Mark with him.

There was grunting and a mixture of tangled limbs as the six went rolling down the side of the hill.  It was Jessell that was able to reach out a hand and grip a nearby tree and halt her fall first quickly slinging her legs around Ridec’s neck to bring him to a halt as well.

“Uh…uh….you’re….ch…choking….”  Ridec was struggling to get out the words as his hands gripped Jessell’s legs in a vain attempt to pry them from around his neck.

“Grab a tree or something and hold on, if I let you go you’ll just continue to fall,” Jessell pointed out.  “Unless you want to fall and break your neck or something.”

Ridec gripped a limb with a free hand his other hand still holding onto Pete.

“I think my neck is already broken,” he grunted.

“Sorry to hear that because you’re going to have to run with a broken neck.  Get up do you think this is a resting spot?”  Jessell ordered and she was already on her feet and racing down the side of the hill again.

“Maybe we should have just let ourselves roll to the bottom,” Ridec suggested wearily trying his best to keep up with Jessell.  Linda was right about one thing, Pete was slowing him down but there was no way he was going to let go of the boy’s hand.

“Get up.”  Jessell was racing past Kent who had finally managed to grab hold of a stone that was jutting out from the side of the hill and to halt his fall.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Kent muttered struggling to get to his feet, his body was battered and bruised and blood looked like it was pouring from everywhere.

“Ggggrrrrrr….”  The gargled noise of the creatures behind them seemed to knock the weariness from Kent’s body and he was racing down the side of the hill again.

“Linda, where’s Linda?”  Kent muttered just as they reached the bottom of the hill and prepared to race across the grassy pasture towards the building.

“Over there, I think she’s unconscious,” Pete pointed out.

“Shoot, she must have rolled all the way down the hill.”