Escape from the Damned (APEX Predator Book 2) (8 page)

She glanced in the direction of the gunfire.  A couple of the men were chasing her, while the guy with long hair and another guy stayed where they were to continue shooting at her.  The zombies were between her and the guys with guns.

Jackson could hear the gunfire coming from the woods.  It wasn’t a lot, but it was close.  He also heard the girl scream.

“Go down and get Sergeant Brown,” he ordered.  Mike complied without hesitating.

A minute later the big NCO and Sgt Procell followed Mike onto the roof.  All four men were armed with rifles.  The three soldiers had M-16 military rifles, and Mike with the Mini-14.  They all instinctively took cover as they crept toward the edge of the roof.

“There,” Sgt Procell pointed.

A girl broke from the trees.  She was wearing a purple and gold t-shirt, her long dark hair flowing behind her as she sprinted towards them.  The zombies in the parking lot were moving at an oblique angle away from her.  They were moving towards the gunshots.  They didn’t see her.

She was behind them now.  None had seen her.  She ran for the LMTV.

“Get a rope down to her,” Sgt Procell yelled.

Soon they pulled her to the roof and safety.  She threw her arms around Sgt Procell and immediately collapsed.  She would not wake up for several hours

Jackie could see the break in the trees and the road beyond.  She felt a wave of relief come over her.  She could move faster on the road.  She could…

She let out a scream as her left shoulder suddenly felt like it had been hit with a hot baseball bat.  She pitched forward at the edge of the woods.  She tried to get up.  Her left arm wouldn’t work when she told it to move.  She kicked with all of her might with her feet.

Looking back, she could see the zombies closing the distance quickly to her.  Panicked, she kicked again and again.  She made it to the road before she realized that the road was filled with more monsters.

Pvt Jackson was the first to fire.  Later he’d regret that decision.  His bullets struck several of the zombies closest to the girl, but not in the head.  The zombies closed on her.  She struggled to her feet, leaning on a tree.  She weakly swung her knife in a wide arc.  It connected with the neck of one of her assailants without doing much more than knocking the knife out of her weakened grip.

She shoved her hand under the zombie’s jaw and shoved as hard as she could.  She was barely able to keep its teeth away from her.  A second zombie grabbed the girl by the head, pulling it towards its mouth.  She dropped to the ground, freeing herself from the monster’s grip.

At this point, she could hear gunshots again.  They were farther away this time.  Maybe someone was finally trying to help her.  She tried to roll to her right, but was unable to with her shattered left shoulder.  She could feel the panic clouding her thoughts.

She shoved her feet under her hips and shoved.  This only served to drop her right onto her face.  She kicked again with her feet, they just dug little trenches into the dirt, not propelling her at all.

By now several zombies had arrived and were kneeling over her and grabbing her from different directions.  She tried to curl into a ball.  Ice cold hands grabbed anything they could on her body and began pulling her closer.

Finally the first bite came.  It was on her neck, just above the bullet wound on her back.  She screamed.  Then she felt another bite, then another.  Each bite caused her to scream again.

Suddenly she felt another bullet slam into her back, this one close to the center of her back.  Her chest suddenly hurt.  Oh, it was the worse pain she’d ever felt.  It burned so bad.  Then everything went numb, the world went black, and the ringing in her ears faded away.  She coughed up a mouthful of blood with her last breath.

The foursome watched in horror as the mass of zombies stripped the young girl clean.  None of the four would know who had fired the mercifully fatal shot.

They watched as the horde of zombies grew even larger, drawn by the sound of gunfire.  They could hear gunfire and screams coming from the woods.  Nobody on the roof had any desire to help the people out there.  They had all heard the gunshot.  They all knew who had shot the girl in the back.

There was a flurry of gunshots, which slowly tapered off to one or two shots.  Then it was quiet.

“I hope they fuck’n rot,” Sgt Procell finally announced.  It was a sentiment that all on the roof shared.

“Stay up here with these guys for a bit longer,” he ordered Sgt Procell.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he went straight to the front of the clinic.  Jen and Mr. LaBlanc followed him.  There he found Mr. Love, Jefferson, and Williams in concealed positions watching the front door.  As he strode into the room, the three men stood.

“What is going on?” demanded Mr. LaBlance.  He told them what they had seen, and more importantly, heard.

“Do you believe that our friends from that compound are responsible?” Mr. Love asked.

“I don’t know,” the NCO answered flatly.

“Well, who the hell do you think they were?” demanded Mr. LaBlanc.

“Easy Mark,” Mr. Love interjected.  “The Sergeant is giving us his opinion.”

“And, I’m just giving you mine.  We haven’t seen any signs of life around here, except those people.  We know they’re not good people.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out John!”

“Look, Mark, I’m just saying don’t jump to any conclusions.  You’re always going off half cocked.  And, does it really matter anyway?”

“Ok guys calm down,” Jen said quietly.

“You come down here and tell us that you witnessed a murder.  We have no idea who did it.  Oh, and we have a bazillion zombies circling us like sharks.  No, Jen, I will not calm down!  And what the hell do you mean I always go off half cocked?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Mark,” the teacher responded.

“Please tell me you’re not going to bring up the Anthony White issue.”

“Of course I’m going to bring up the White issue.  You got a kid expelled and you were wrong!”

“The hell I was.  He was just as guilty as the other kids.  He got what he deserved!”

“The kid tried to kill himself!”

The shorter man looked at SSgt Brown and Jen.

“I did not do anything wrong.  He helped the other punks perform a prank on me and he was expelled.  End of story!  I can’t help it that he couldn’t handle the punishment.  He shouldn’t have done that to me!”

“What did he do,” Jen asked.

“He helped four of his little drug dealing buddies flip my car over in the school parking lot.  It cost me almost a thousand bucks to get my car fixed.”  The teacher’s voice was getting louder as he spoke.

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” Mr. Love said.  “Mark busted four kids dealing drugs behind the school after school about two years ago.  He did his job, reported them, and they were in fact, expelled.  Mr. White was friends with one of the kids.  About a week later, Mark’s car was found flipped over in the parking lot after school.”

“And that kid was responsible!”

“No he wasn’t,” Mr. Love responded.  “They found the fingerprints of the four kids who were expelled all over the car.  One of the kids said Anthony was with them.  The other kids denied it.  Mark heard this and flipped.  Anthony had accused Mark of losing one of his graded papers a few weeks before…”

“I did not lose his paper.  That kid never turned it in…”

“Anyway, Mark heard about the other kid’s accusation and jumped on it.  He demanded that Anthony get expelled, and go to jail.  He demanded that the kid’s mom pay for the damages to the vehicle.  Two weeks after being expelled, Anthony swallowed a bunch of his grandma’s pills.”

Jen gasped.  As an ER nurse, she’d seen too many kids try to hurt themselves.  She didn’t always know the story.

“The next week, the kid recanted his accusation.  Turns out the kid had offered Anthony money to do his homework about a month before all of this.  Anthony had turned him down and threatened to rat him out.  He had a grudge with Anthony, so he lied.”

Jen and SSgt Brown gave Mr. LaBlanc a look of disbelief and disappointment

“That is not true.  That kid lied!”

“Bullshit Mark!  That kid tried to kill himself because you went off demanding blood!”

Mr. LaBlanc was at a loss.  He couldn’t defend himself.  He could see the look on the faces of the others.  They were disgusted with him.  He felt his face flush and his stomach churn.  He mumbled something under his breath and walked off.

“Ok,” SSgt Brown said.  “Mr. Love, make sure the kids are ok.  I’m sure they heard the shooting.  Tell them that we had some zombies close or something.  Don’t tell them we shot some poor girl, ok?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“You two stay here,” he told the two soldiers.  “Jen, let’s talk in your office.”

The two walked into Jen’s treatment room.  At the moment, the group was healthy.  The room was empty and pretty secluded.

Jen and the dark haired girl were in the room.  SSgt Brown could see now that she was not Hispanic, but more likely Indian or Pakistani.  He knew that Louisiana State University had a campus in Shreveport and there was a large population of foreigners in the Medical School.

“How is she,” he asked Jen.

“None the worse for wear,” she answered.

“Sergeant Brown, this is Indira.  Indira is an LSUS student.  Or, she was a student.”

The young girl jumped up and hugged the big soldier.  Tears rolled down her face.  She held him tighter.  “Thank you,” she whispered over and over.  For the second time in two minutes, SSgt Brown was forced to reassess his impression of the girl.  Instead of a foreign accent, the girl had a deep southern drawl.  She was American.

She let him go and began to recount the horrors of the last three weeks.  She had been stuck in her apartment in Shreveport for almost three days after the outbreak.  She finally became desperate and ran.  She was able to get a motorcycle and made it to this area before she found another survivor.

He had appeared to be injured in a car wreck.  As she was going through medical training, she stopped to help.  The next thing she knew, she was jumped by several big men with guns.  They disarmed her of the softball bat she had used for her escape.  The next couple of weeks were a hell of rape, isolation, and starvation.  She told them of the young girl who helped her escape and the older lady, shot in the back by the kid with the cut throat.

SSgt Brown called for Mike.  After introducing him to Indira, he asked Mike to show her to the citadel and to get her squared away with some kind of weapon, some breakfast, and somewhere to sleep tonight.

He turned back to Jen.  “How is Mrs. Arrington?” he asked flatly.

“She’s better.  She ate some dinner last night; not a lot, but she ate some.”  Since the incident at the hardware store, the teacher had totally shut down.  Jen had told SSgt Brown that she was suffering from severe PTSD.  SSgt Brown had seen GI’s with PTSD, but never this bad.

“What is the prognosis?”

“I have no idea.  I’m an ER nurse.  I get them like this and hand them off to the Psych docs.  I know some of the meds, but I don’t do therapy.”

“Can you give her any meds?”

“Not from here.  This vet obviously didn’t have too many horses on Prozac or dogs on Xanax.  I don’t know which of these drugs work like human drugs.  The drug companies do that on purpose.  Think of how many vet’s offices would get robbed if the junkies knew which drugs gave you the same high as Percocet or Valium.”

He looked at her with a puzzled look on his face.

“Look, she needs something like Klonopin or Xanax.  I’m sure there is something like that in here, but I don’t know which drugs do what.  Plus, I don’t know the right doses.  Some of these drugs can be very dangerous if taken wrong.  So, until she snaps out of it or we get some human meds for her, she’s not going to get much better.”

“Ok, do what you can.”  He couldn’t think of anything else to say to her.  “Anything else I need to know?”

“You mean do you need to be told that the sanitary conditions are horrendous?  The water stopped running two days ago.  The toilets are full of everything that could conceivably come out of a human body.  Did you see what we had for dinner last night?  I can show you.”  She paused.  “…because it’s still on the plates.  The trash is piling up.”

“I get it,” he said looking at the ground.  He knew this was his fault.   Everyone was so shaken after the Lieutenant was bitten, he’d cut them some slack.  He realized now that he’d let discipline slip too much.

I’ll take care of it.”

“I don’t want to sound like a bitch, but what do you plan to do?”

“I’ll set up a KP schedule for starters.”

“Ok, that deals with the kitchen garbage.  What are you going to do with it?  Where are you going to put the trash?”

“Well the zombies already know we’re here,” he said.  “We can throw it overboard if you like.”

“And the dog crap too?”

“Yes, I’ll have the dog cages cleaned out,” he sighed.

“What about the toilets?  Last I looked we have no running water, and I only saw about 2 cases of bottled water in the back.  Are you going to use our limited drinking water to flush the toilets?”