Chapter 14
“Darn!” Kent yelled and turned on his heels and raced back to the camp area, Jessell and Ridec close behind him.
“He turned, he turned…!” Pete was screaming racing to Ridec as soon as he came into sight.
“We said no gun fire,” Kent screamed angrily.
“I had no choice he was coming straight at me.” Linda looked panicked while Mark’s body was twitching on the ground looking as if he was struggling to get up.
“You should have finished it off.” Kent looked upset as he hurried forward and dragged his knife across the throat, the torso fell limp to the ground and Kent knelt there still holding its head.
“Watch out!” Kate yelled, the teeth were snapping at Kent’s hand in spite of having no body. He tossed it into the air angrily and kicked it away before it could drop to the ground again.
“He wasn’t dead.” Ridec looked at Jessell in horror.
“They are undead; bullets at the back of the head paralyses them but there is still activity until the fluid drains out and breaks the connection with the brain. Once there is still fluid in the brain even if you cut the head off it can still live sometimes,” Kent explained.
“Without legs it can’t do too much, and the torso can’t walk without the brain connection,” Linda put in.
“That was really freaky.” Ridec couldn’t help but feel as if he had crossed into a nightmare world. “I just want us to go home.” He was looking pointedly at Jessell as he spoke.
“I want that too,” Jessell muttered and for the first time he could see that she was just as freaked out as him at being in this place.
His hand slipped over hers and she gripped it firmly. Jessell had known what she was getting into when she had come to the surface to save Ridec, she might act tough but she was scared too. “Mark…” Kate looked crestfallen.
“I told you we were wasting our time carrying him with us,” Linda said angrily.
“We should get out of here, who knows how far the sound of those shots travelled and how many more of those zombies are out there,” Jessell muttered ignoring Linda.
“You’re right,” Kent grunted as he wiped his hands in his pants.
“I think I hear something,” Pete whispered.
“Yeah…sounds like…” Linda seemed to be concentrating intently.
“Let’s go!” Kent yelled gripping Jessell’s hand and starting to run without warning.
The sound of numerous leaves and bushes rustling floated back to their ears and added wings to their feet.
“It could be hundreds of them!” Linda yelled her voice breathless.
“Go, go, go!” Kent was fast, he was tugging Jessell along at an amazing speed.
“I can see them!” Kate screamed.
“Oh my gosh!” Linda yelled.
“We can’t outrun them! They’re too fast!”
It was unbelievable. The grip Jessell held on Ridec’s hand felt like a vice, clearly she had no intention of being separated from him.
“The kid’s slowing us down! He’s too small to run fast enough,” Linda shouted but she too was struggling to keep up.
“He’s fine, I have him,” Ridec answered.
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.”
“We have to help her…right?” Pete was looking up at Ridec as if he was searching for guidance on this matter. This was new ground for him but this clean, handsome stranger seemed to think it was normal to risk your life for people you didn’t know.
Ridec hesitated momentarily, Linda had been prepared to leave Mark and later Pete behind, she really didn’t deserve his support.
“Those things are coming we have to make it to cover.” Kent gripped Jessell’s hand and took a step forward.
“No, we have to help Linda,” Ridec put in.
“Help…” Kent looked shocked. “Is he always so annoying?”
“Most of the time,” Jessell offered as she hurried over to where Linda was lying on the ground. “Grab that side and I’ll hold this side.”
“I’ll carry her,” Kent said not really sure why he had made the offer. Perhaps the young stranger was starting to have an effect on him too.
“I’ll try to hold them off and give you lot a little extra time,” Jessell said pulling her pistol from the holster and starting to shoot at the creatures as they came running, tumbling, rolling and crawling down the side of the hill.
“I’ll help,” Ridec started to say but Jessell cut him off immediately.
“Just run Ridec, I don’t need to be watching my back and yours too.”
“I…” Ridec wasn’t sure why the order made him feel so indignant, in Merland he was more than accustomed to taking orders but somehow here it seemed as if Jessell telling him to run was a criticism of who he was. She saw Kent as someone that could help but he was of little more assistance than Pete.
“Go Ridec!” Jessell screamed again her guns going full blast.
He didn’t hesitate this time he slipped his body beneath Linda’s arm and helped Kent to run towards the building with her.
“What kind of building is this?” Pete asked as they neared the short flight of steps.
“I have no idea,” Kent muttered rattling at the door knob.
“I think it must have been a library,” Ridec explained. It was difficult to determine it was a library except that Ridec could still make out the large ‘L’ and a ‘b’ and figured it would make sense for such a place to have been a library. What was strange was how completely overgrown the building was with bush and trees, vines twisted and twined all around it and it was nothing short of a miracle that there was still a clear entrance to the building. In fact the more he thought about it the less he thought of it as a miracle and the more he thought that someone was keeping the entrance clear.
“We have to break this door down,” Kent muttered.
“Maybe someone’s inside,” Ridec suggested.
“In the middle of nowhere?” Kent shot back. “This whole place is just bushes and trees.”
“Help us!” Ridec yelled releasing Linda to bang vigorously on the door. There was no response.
“We have to break it down,” Kent repeated.
“It looks pretty sturdy,” Pete muttered.
“Hello…please let us in,” Ridec persisted.
The sound of shots in the distance had died away and Ridec turned about to see what was happening to Jessell, she was fighting with her daggers now, had she run out of bullets?
“Please, please let us in!” Ridec screamed banging even louder on the door.
“Just get back kid, we need to put our shoulders to this door and …” Kent’s words were cut off as the door swung open and a twelve year old boy stood in the door way staring at them.
“Please let us in,” Ridec said but Kent was already dragging Linda from the ground and pushing past the boy.
“I don’t like visitors here,” the boy said quietly but he stepped away from the door staring at Pete carefully.
“Jessell,” Ridec screamed. He could see she was already making her retreat, perhaps she had heard the door open; unfortunately the zombies were racing after her.
“Get in, get in,” Jessell was breathless as she rushed into the door and slammed it shut behind her, the entire building went completely dark in an instant.
“Grrrrr….” The growls of the creatures outside seemed to penetrate the door.
“Do you think they can break it down?” Pete asked nervously.
“No, the door is too strong,” the twelve year-old responded confidently.
“You get a lot of attacks here?” Kent asked.
“Are you here on your own?” Jessell put in.
“We need someplace to put Linda and we need some light so I can see just how badly she’s hurt,” Ridec put in.
“You look after hurt people?” The boy asked.
“Not really…” Ridec started to say.
“He’s a genius, he can do anything…including look after sick people,” Jessell put in. “You have sick people here with you?”
“Well…” The boy dragged his word slowly just as the lights in the room came flooding on and almost blinding Ridec. He was just starting to grow accustomed to the dark.
“No sicker than anyone else,” a deep male voice said forcefully. “But we try to only accept people who can add value to our little family.”
The brightened room revealed three men armed with bow and arrows and a young man who could have been no more than twenty three years old armed simply with a stick.
“You realize we have guns,” Jessell pointed out.
“I figured if you still had bullets you’d still be out there shooting zombies,” the eldest of the men said.
“We’re Resistance,” Kent said authoritatively. “You’d better not mess with us.”
“You don’t look like you’re putting up much of a resistance to those zombies out there,” the old man said and sniggered, Ridec liked him immediately.
“If it weren’t for the Resistance people like you wouldn’t be able to eke out a living.”
The old man tossed back his head and laughed outright.
“The Resistance hasn’t done anything for us, if we’ve eked out a living it’s because we’ve done it on our wits alone.”
“This place would be crawling with zombies if…”
“This place is crawling with zombies son,” the old man cut in.”
“Maybe we should try to patch up our friend first,” Ridec put in. He couldn’t deny that he was enjoying the exchange between Kent and the old man but he knew that Linda had looked pretty bad and she was still unconscious, that was never a good sign.
“We didn’t say you could stay,” the young man with the stick pointed out.
“If he can help sick people we might need him, Kayla desperately needs help now,” the old man countered and Jessell and Ridec exchanged a quick glance. Everyone couldn’t help but wonder exactly what was wrong with this Kayla they were talking about.