Positive (21 page)

 

CHAPTER 56

H
er ­people came for me then. They spent some time beating me, just for fun, I guess, or to make me understand my place. They took their time with it—­eventually the sun went down.

When they got tired of their game, they shoved me into the screened-­off porch, which now looked surprisingly like a jail cell. It was bitterly cold out there, and very dark. The door slammed shut behind me, and I heard it lock. Suddenly I was alone. No one was touching me or trying to hurt me.

I slumped down to the floor and curled up, the pain twisting my muscles into stiff knots. I could hear laughter and music from beyond the door.

If I could have burned down that house with all of them inside right then, I would have.

For hours I just lay there, hurting and feeling sorry for myself. Eventually I recovered the strength to check my injuries, to make sure nothing was broken and that I had stopped bleeding. Everything seemed okay, if sore. I guess the crew knew what they were doing and had stopped themselves before things got out of hand.

What kind of ­people made a study of that? Of learning just how far you could push a human body before it broke?

Red Kate had said she was a maggot in the corpse of the world. I decided then and there that she was letting herself off too easily. She wasn't just some harmless insect. She was a devil, and her crew were demons out of hell.

But they weren't infallible. They'd made one bad mistake. They'd thought, maybe, that beating me would show me how helpless I was. That I couldn't resist them. Instead, it had hardened me somehow. Too dumb to quit, right?

It had made me want to escape.

I crawled over to the screened walls of the porch and started scratching at the fine metal mesh. I had to get away. If I stayed with Kate and her crew one more day, it would only bring new horrors and more pain. Anything was better than that.

Even being alone, defenseless, out in the wilderness. Out there with the zombies.

Weak and battered as I was, it took me most of the night to break through the screens without making a lot of noise. I tore at them with rough fingernails, making just a little progress at a time, cutting my fingers badly in the process. But eventually I managed to tear open a little slit in one of the screens, and then its fabric parted easily. It was the work of only a minute more to make a hole I could wriggle through.

And then I was free. I got painfully to my feet and found I was standing on a narrow rock ledge hanging over the rushing water. I could barely see the rapids, but I felt an almost overwhelming urge to jump into them. To plunge into that cold water and be swept over the falls. My broken body would be washed clean as it was carried away to the distant sea.

But no. The instinct for survival is surprisingly strong. Even at the worst of times it holds out something, some flicker of hope. Instead of jumping in the water, I edged my way around the building, keeping low so I couldn't be seen from any of the windows. Eventually I came around to the yard in front where the motorcycles were all parked.

Motorcycles I had no idea how to drive.

I went over to Kate's bike and got my knife back. It was still in the scabbard bolted to the side of her engine. It felt like—­something. Some small measure of security, though nowhere near enough.

Then I ran out of there. I loped down the gravel path, back toward the slightly wider country road I remembered from the day before. I had no idea how to get back to the turnpike—­I hadn't paid attention on the ride here. I picked a direction at random and started jogging, figuring that I would eventually find a bigger road, and then a bigger one, until I got back to a highway. There I could hopefully find some nice road pirate who was just wandering by, who would give me a ride in exchange for my pleasant company.

I was going to die and I knew it. This forest hid too many dangers, too many hidden catastrophes just waiting for me to stumble into. Even if I managed to avoid every one of them, it would be only a matter of time before I starved to death. No, scratch that. I would die of thirst first. After what had happened to Addison, I knew I could never drink water from any of the streams or creeks I came across.

When I got desperate enough, I knew I would anyway.

 

CHAPTER 57

I
walked all night. I walked until the sun started to come up. It was funny how much better I felt to be able to see things again.

It wasn't much, but it gave me a little strength. It kept me going a few more miles.

Long enough to come to the bridge. It wasn't much to look at. Just a one-­lane span over a ditch, held up by aluminum struts. In the eerie blue light of predawn it seemed to glow in the dark. Its surface rang under my feet as I stepped warily onto it, careful in case it collapsed.

It took my weight. And suddenly I couldn't go any farther. I had to sit down, had to lie down on that metal span and feel how cool it was. The cold would be a balm to my battered skin.

“Come on, Finn,” I whispered. “Come on,” I whined. “Keep going. Okay, stop, but don't—­don't sit down. Just don't.”

My body wasn't listening to me. It was going to sit down. I took another step, toward the center of the bridge, and it was like fighting off a pack of wolves. I went to the railing on the side of the bridge and put my hand on it, thinking it would help support me. Help me keep going a few more feet. If I could make it to the other side—­

My hand made the railing shake and ring. The echoes rolled around the ditch below me, a narrow gap in the landscape through which a tiny trickle of brown water flowed. I forced myself, with my last ounce of strength, to take another step, and my footfall rang out.

It was echoed by a strange squelching sound. Like something crawling through muck. The sound came again before I could take another step.

I leaned over the railing and looked down. A face was down there in the ditch, staring back up at me. In the weird light it might have been the face of a ghost. Except it wasn't. The face had red eyes, framed by long, stringy black hair.

Then a hand reached up and clawed at the face, as another zombie pulled itself out of the mud to look up and see what was making all the noise.

The two of them squirmed out of their muddy nest, pushing and pulling and fighting their way up the loose dirt that formed the wall of the ditch. They moved slowly as they climbed, grabbing a handful of tree roots here, falling back there as the mud slid out from under them. It seemed they would never get up to the top of the ditch.

But then I heard a ringing noise behind me. I turned my head—­and saw a third zombie climbing over the railing, not ten feet away from me. Its red eyes burned as its jaws worked at the air.

 

CHAPTER 58

T
hey were catching up. They were only a few steps behind me.

I had run, a little, when the zombies started chasing me. I'd had enough strength left, or rather, fear had lent me just enough adrenaline, to get a head start. But then the pain had come back to my side and my wind had left me and my legs absolutely refused to run a step farther, even if it meant being eaten alive.

The zombies didn't get tired. They didn't need to take breaks. There was food right there in front of them, just a little farther away than they could grab, always tantalizingly out of reach.

I would have wept if I wasn't so dehydrated. I would have soiled myself in fear if there'd been anything in my stomach.

I forced myself to walk. To at least move, even if it was just a slow shuffle at this point, a gait as desperately sad and broken as that of the zombies. I kept walking because I couldn't stop. I kept walking because if I stopped, they would grab me and pull me down and eat me alive. I kept walking because . . . because . . . because there wasn't enough energy left in my body to think of a reason not to. I don't know. I kept walking because I was too stupid to give up, like Adare said.

I had my knife. I figured that if I did have to stop, if they caught me, I could fight off one of them, or maybe two. If I had the strength to lift my arm. The third one would get me, though. Or one of them would bite me before I could finish it off. And then I wouldn't just be a positive. I'd be an infected.

Kylie made it,
I thought. Kylie must have made it to Ohio, to the medical camp, by that point. So I'd done something good with my life. I'd saved her—­and Mary, and Heather, and hopefully Addison. I'd freed them from Adare and pointed them in the right direction.

That had to be enough, right?

I realized I was arguing with myself, trying to justify the moment when I finally did give up. When I let go and let the zombies have me. Because that would be less painful—­or at least, it would be over quicker—­than taking another step.

I kept walking.

Ahead of me, the trees parted. The road curved to meet up with another road. A bigger one. I staggered up the curve, onto the new road.

And suddenly it was just too much.

My legs turned to soft rubber. My knees bent the wrong way, and I went down hard, one kneecap hitting the asphalt and sending waves of shock all the way up my back. I put my hands down to catch myself, scratched my palms on the road surface.

The zombies were right behind me. I couldn't do anything, couldn't run. Couldn't fight. I drew a long deep breath to have something to scream with.

I heard a horn blaring, but I was too distracted to pay attention. The horn kept sounding, and eventually I got annoyed with it enough to look up, to glance in the direction of the sound.

A big vehicle, a pickup truck, was coming right at me, at probably fifty miles an hour.
Okay,
I thought.
That works.
No way I would survive the collision. Better than having my skin torn off and my innards devoured by zombies.

Through the windshield of the truck I saw the driver make a sweeping gesture with one hand, clearly trying to tell me something. Move. Get out of the way. I was so far gone at that point, so mentally tired, I couldn't resist the suggestion. I had an incredible compulsion to do what I was told.

I launched myself forward, throwing myself down on the road surface, and rolled.

Behind me the three zombies were standing, staring at the oncoming truck, looking confused. Not for very long.

They exploded in a cloud of white and red and pink and gray when the truck hit them, their bodies disintegrating in the air. Flecks and larger chunks splattered all over me. The truck kept going, fishtailing a little as it disappeared around a curve in the road.

 

CHAPTER 59

D
amn,
I thought.
Damn. Now I have to get up. Now I have to stand up.

At least I could take my time about it.

I lay there just breathing for a while. Just staring up at the blue sky, framed by the green leaves of the trees over my head. Listening to the swell and sigh of the crickets in the tall grass at the side of the road. It seemed like a nice enough place to take a nap, there in the middle of the road.

I closed my eyes.

A little later—­I couldn't say how long, it was just black, black sleep inside my head—­I heard a car door open and then thud shut again. I heard leather boots crunch and squeak on the asphalt. Sounds were okay, they didn't take any energy to listen to. Plus, and this was definitely a bonus, I could ignore them. I could go back to sleep.

“You're with those bikers, right? A road pirate?” a woman asked. I heard her walk away from me. I heard her boots moving around. I could ignore sounds. “I've been keeping an eye on your crew the last ­couple of days. Waiting for you to leave. Lucky for you, I guess, that I was close by. You headed out of my jurisdiction, or what?”

There were interesting words in there, words I felt like I might respond to when I got a chance. When I woke up.

“Hey. Did I hit you by accident? Are you dead?”

A leather boot kicked my hand. It hurt.

I sighed, because now I was going to have to open my eyes.

I opened my left eye a crack. Then I opened both of them, because what I saw was the barrel of a gun pointed right at the tip of my nose.

Say something,
I thought. That was the first lesson Adare taught me. When you meet ­people out in the wilderness, you have to say something so they know you're not a zombie. Zombies don't talk. ­People do.

“I'm not dead,” I said. My voice came out like the noise of a rusty hinge, but maybe the woman holding the gun understood me anyway.

The gun barrel looked huge. It filled up half the blue sky. I thought I could see the tip of the bullet inside, way up that cavernous tunnel, copper colored and cold.

“I want to make something clear, here. I didn't just save your life,” she told me. “I did give you fair warning, sure. But the whole point of that exercise was to take out three zombies. That's all.”

“Thanks anyway,” I squeaked.

“Yeah. Look, I'm not going to kill you, not unless you start something. So don't look so terrified, all right? I don't like it. I don't like looking at you like that.”

I blinked my eyes rapidly. It felt like the insides of my eyelids were lined with sandpaper, but I had no choice. “Gun,” I sputtered.

“Sure,” she said, and the barrel of the gun moved away, moved out of my immediate vision. “Sorry. I guess. It's just—­your kind and mine, we don't get along. Historically.”

“My kind?”

“Bikers. Bikers and lawmen, we always used to be going at it. You look about half dead, you know that?”

For the first time I got a good look at the woman who, despite avowed intentions, had saved my life. I was surprised first to see that she was old. Her hair was silver, tied back behind her head in a no-­nonsense bun. Her face was lined with wrinkles. On her head she wore a hat with a very wide brim, a kind of hat I'd never seen before. She also wore tight-­fitting black pants and black leather boots and a brown leather jacket. A patch on her shoulder read
PENNSYL
VANIA STATE POLICE T
ROOPER
. On the front of her jacket was a nameplate that read
CAXTON
.

“Listen, I guess we don't have to be enemies. You can even help me out, okay? And then I'll give you a ride somewhere. Back to your pirate friends or whatever.”

“Help?”

“Yeah.” She dug in a pocket of her jacket and pulled out two floppy objects, whitish in color like the belly of a fish. They were both splattered with blood and matted hair. It took me a second to realize they were ears. “I know I killed three of those bastards. But I can only find two of these. I need you to help me look for the third.”