Eaters (17 page)

There was a loud crash inside the gas station shop. They both turned and looked in that direction, but there were no lights on inside, so they couldn’t see what had caused it.

Aidan glanced up at the numbers on the pump. “Good enough. Let’s get going.”

They hopped back on the motorcycle and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the gas nozzle on the ground and the receipt flapping out of the machine.

A few miles down the road, after they had gained a few hundred feet in elevation, a mass of dark clouds rumbled above, a sure sign of a summer squall. A couple minutes later, the sky let loose. It was a downpour that was sure to be brief, as they nearly always were, but plenty to soak them from head to toe while they rode.

They kept on driving as the rain pelted them and limited their visibility. Cheryl worried about Aidan taking the curves so fast as they drove higher. One slip on the wet pavement could send them careening over the edge, flying out over a couple hundred foot drop into a grove of pine trees and aspens. She closed her eyes and held on, trusting that this wasn’t his first time driving in such dismal weather and hoping that he knew this road like the back of his hand after commuting from his mountain home to his job day after day.

She didn’t open her eyes until she realized that they were slowing down. The rain was still hammering down as he came to a full stop in the middle of the road.

“What are you…?”

She looked ahead, through the sheets of water pouring down. A dozen yards in front of them, the road ahead was a solid wall of Eaters—a small infected army.

“Aidan!” she yelled with a trembling voice. “Turn around.”

The mass started shambling towards them and he revved the engine, but didn’t move.

“What are you doing? Let’s go.”

“We can’t.”

She screeched now. “What do you mean?”

“Look behind us.”

She saw them in his side mirror before she turned around. There was another group closing in on them from the rear. They hadn’t heard the approaching moans, because of the loudness of the motorcycle engine. Now, they were trapped between the two oncoming groups with a mountain on one side of the road and a sheer drop down the other.

Her heart pounded, and her breaths came shallow and fast—not enough oxygen getting to her brain. “What are we…going…to do?”

He revved the engine again. “Go through them.”

“You’re crazy. We can’t!”

“No time to debate it, hon’. Just tuck in and hold on!”

Just as the Eaters in the rear came dangerously close, he charged forward. With her head buried in his back, and her arms tight around him, she couldn’t see anything, but she could smell the stench before they hit. It was like a thousand rotting corpses with flesh decayed into a nauseating stew of blood, pus, urine, and feces all mixed together. There was no time to gag as they crashed into the wall of bodies. The impact almost knocked them off the bike. It was clear that the group hadn’t parted at all as they drove over arms, legs…
heads?
The rest hadn’t fallen like dominoes—they were a sea of snapping teeth and bloody grabbing hands. They clawed at their clothes and their hair, pulling and yanking at anything they could. Then, the motorcycle began to slow.

Oh no. Oh, God. Please no.

An Eater had a fistful of her hair. She held on to Aidan, screaming with pain as the Eater pulled it and tried force her head back. She knew that if he succeeded, her face and neck would be an open buffet for the crowd surrounding her. So just as if she was holding on for dear life to the edge of a skyscraper, thirty stories up, she held on, even as the roots of her hair tore away from her scalp from underneath the helmet.

Aidan revved the engine, trying to break free of the hold of so many hands, but they were slowing down from the drag of so much weight. “Hit them!” he yelled.

What?
She did not want to lift her head. But as she realized they were about to come to a standstill in the midst of this hungry mob and she felt teeth and hands tearing at her clothing, she knew that she had to summon some kind of supernatural strength inside her to help.

She kicked to one side then the other, smashing her boots into shins and kneecaps. Then with one great exhale, she lifted her head and unshouldered the rifle. Using her elbows and the heavy gunstock, she began to hit left and right. She slammed into heads and chests, impacting some with a
thunk
, and into others with more rotten flesh with a
squish
.

She could see Aidan kicking as he tried to do the same. They picked up a little speed, but still weren’t free enough to break away. They were too close to try to shoot, and she was worried that they might grab the gun barrel if she tried, so she alternated between using the gun as a bludgeon and punching with her fist. Her knuckles cracked into jaws, sending teeth and blood flying. She bashed another on the head with the gunstock then was about to defend the other side again when an Eater with flaking gray skin on his bald head and mottled rivers of blackened veins on his bare arms, grabbed her wrist. She couldn’t get the gun around quickly enough to bash him as he started pulling her arm towards his mouth. She felt his cold, sick breath on her wrist as the motorcycle leapt forward. He didn’t let go. Instead, he stumbled forward along with them, crushing her arm with a vise-like hold.

“Aidan!” she screamed, close to being pulled off.

He looked back and saw her plight, slowing the bike just a hair. “Hit him! In the face!”

It was a dangerous proposition—she’d have to let go of Aidan’s back in order to reach around and butt the Eater in the head with the gunstock. She wasn’t sure she had the strength left to hit him hard enough to knock him off, especially from such an odd angle. She had another idea that upped the danger another couple of notches, but there was no time to do math and weigh the pros and cons, because he was leaning forward now, stumbling along, jaws snapping, trying to gouge at her arm with his teeth. In another second or two, he’d find his mark if the others around her, clawing to get a hold, didn’t first.

During her sophomore year in high school, she’d been on the flag team, where she’d twirled either a flag on a long pole or a fake wooden rifle painted white along with the band’s music at football games. She prayed that her muscle memory, after so many years, would still be there.
Because she’d only have one chance.

Clenching the sides of the motorcycle painfully hard with her knees to hang on, she let go of Aidan. Then, in one swift motion, she twirled the rifle around so the barrel faced away from her. She grabbed a hold of it like a spear then spun around and slammed it into the Eater’s cheekbone. As it connected, it slipped upwards and pierced through his right eye socket. She almost went with it as her knees popped up, but using every muscle in her core, she was able to swing back around. The gun barrel popped out of the Eater’s skull with a sucking
pop
sound, barely audible above the moaning and the whine of the engine. In the same instant, they shot forward, and broke free of the mob.

She had not even realized that the rain had stopped until she saw a bright streak of sunshine slanting down over the road. They drove through it, and for a quick second, were in a spotlight slicing through the gloom.

You made it kiddo…didn’t think you had it in you
.

Whether it was God or Mark rattling around in her head mattered less than the fact that she was still alive to hear it.

Chapter Fourteen

Aidan drove ten more miles, going faster than before, whipping dangerously around sharp curves before he dropped his speed. With her rifle slung back over her shoulder, she laid her head on his shoulder and held on tight, feeling her heart still beating wildly. After a few more minutes, he pulled over to the side of the road next to a roaring stream that bubbled up white froth over the tops of boulders in its middle and looked like it had just been fed by a gully-washer from somewhere higher up.

He left the engine running, took off his helmet and turned around to face her. “Are you alright?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She was too focused on the bloody bald spot she’d seen at the back of his head and her paranoia that the group of Eaters were just paces behind them. She surveyed her condition: her clothes were torn; there were scratch marks all over her skin; the back of her head hurt like hell where she’d also lost a chunk of hair, and mentally, well, she was pretty sure that she was in a state of shock…and feeling kind of angry.

She punched him in the shoulder. “You almost got us killed!”

He threw his arms up in the air and squawked back. “What else were we going to do? Climb the mountain? Fly over the side of the cliff? There was nowhere else to go but straight up the middle.”

She knew he was right. But still, it had been sheer madness diving straight into a wall full of infected mouths and clawing hands. Could he have waited a few more seconds until moving forward then taken advantage of a few holes to weave in and out of them? She didn’t know. But she did know that feeling such a loss of control, unable to make any decision about her own survival
herself,
really sucked.

“Nice moves by the way. What made you think to do that?”

“Hunh?” she mumbled.

“The way you twirled that gun and gouged him.”

She thought for a moment. “Keys. They tell women and little old ladies to stab an attacker in the eye with their keys. Figured it might work with the gun barrel.”

“Oh.” He shrugged, flipped down the kickstand, and hoisted himself off the motorcycle. “I could really use a drink. How about you?”

She told him about the warm beers still tucked into her bag.

“No thanks.” He carefully made his way down to the stream, hopping over big rocks on the bank like a billy goat, then crouched near the edge and scooped up a handful of the chilly water, pouring some into his mouth and over his face. “Come on, this is great!”

She really did not want to get off the motorcycle. She felt more secure staying on it. “Just a second,” she called. She lifted her helmet. The pain was worse as it came off, and when she touched the back of her scalp, it was wet with blood on the bare spot where the chunk of her hair had been ripped away. She was thankful that Aidan had the helmets. In Colorado, there was no helmet law. In this state, riders enjoyed feeling the wind through their hair and the taste of bugs in their teeth. She knew that she partially owed her life to that red piece of fiberglass that had protected her head. She set it on the back of the bike and joined him on the stream bank.

“Whose helmet?”

He sighed and wiped at his brow with the torn sleeve of his leather jacket. “My girlfriend’s.”

Cheryl didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Where is she?”

“When I left the construction site, I went straight to her house, knowing she was home with her kid.” He crouched down and started raking his wet fingers through his hair. “I found them…what was left of them anyway.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh God, I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes. “She was a good gal. I might’ve married her and adopted her rugrat.”

He wiped away a tear and squeezed his head in his palm, and Cheryl saw a gash across the back of his hand. “You’re hurt. Were you bitten?”

“No. They were clawing at me.”

“It looks like teeth marks.”

“I don’t think so.”

She wondered if he was telling the truth, or if he didn’t really know how he got the wound in all that chaos and was just guessing. She scooped some of the cool water into her mouth, making a mental note to stay alert around him just in case. The fact that Barry had been eating crispy fried burgers and playing Death Masters one minute then coming at her like a hungry wolf the next was still fresh in her mind.

She took off the damp camouflage shirt and noticed with a frown that it was badly torn in several places. She rolled it up, squeezed the water out of it and started to put it back on.

“You shouldn’t be wearing that. It’s still sopping wet. You’re already shivering. You’ll freeze to death before we get to the cabin.”

Cheryl hadn’t realized that she was shivering until he pointed it out, but maybe it was more due to the harrowing experience that she’d just had than the temperature. “Freeze? It’s July, and it must be well over ninety today. Aren’t you cooking in that leather jacket?”

“Not up here.”

She realized now that the temperature had actually dropped a few degrees since they left the city and gained elevation. She inhaled a deep breath, appreciating the crispness of the cooler air. It smelled fresh, like pine and spruce, and sky, not like the city that was suffocatingly hot and ripe with the smell of blood and death.

“You might as well just drop that wet thing and leave it here.”

“Not a chance.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’ve got warmer shirts and sweaters up at the cabin.”

She flattened it out over a rock and looked at the name on the front. “It was Mark’s.”