Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness (16 page)

“Josh...” Jeremy said.

Josh turned and looked at Jeremy. Jeremy almost
did not recognize the man before him.

“What did I do, Jeremy?”

Josh looked at Jeremy, then over at Laura’s
body. He crawled over to her and rested his head against her chest. He placed
his hand on her bloody stomach. Jeremy winced.

No, the baby…

“Josh, why did they do this?”

Josh snapped up.

“CJ! He’s still out there! They’re trying to
track him down!”

Jeremy heard footsteps behind him. Lexx, Tori,
and the others walked up to the scene. Tori looked at the crumpled up body in
front of Josh and then at Jeremy.

“What the fuck,” she mouthed.

Josh stood up.

“I have to find him!” He shouted.

Jeremy grabbed him by the shoulders.

“No! We’ll find him. You stay here,” he said,
giving Josh a shake.

Josh’s eyes glazed over and he slunk down to his
knees again.

Jeremy turned to the group behind him.

“Tori stay here with him. We’ll go find CJ.”

She nodded and looked over at Josh. He was
crying and mumbling to himself again.

“Okay, but hurry.”

She caught Lexx’s eyes for a brief moment,
before the five of them took off running towards the woods.

She turned back to Josh, who was holding his
dead wife’s body again, mumbling to himself.

“They’re not mine, they’re not mine, they’re not
mine…”

CJ could hear the crunching of leaves behind
him. He knew they were not far behind him, but he did not dare turn and look.

They want to catch me,
he thought.
If they
wanted me dead, they would have shot me by now.

He dodged a tree in the darkness.

But maybe they don’t have guns. Maybe they are
going to kill me; they just have to catch me first.

He was not going to let that happen. It was
dark, but CJ knew where he was. He had spent much of his summers exploring
these woods. He was as familiar with these woods as he was his own house. He and
his sister would play hide and seek here, the games lasting whole afternoons.
There was no spot in these trees that CJ did not know about.

Even the newly added zombie traps, most of which
CJ helped build.

CJ and his grandfather placed the several pits
with not much strategy in mind. They were just one last thing to stop the dead
from possibly reaching the house. The chance of a zombie wandering into one
were slim, but it made everyone feel better. Plus, CJ thought it was somewhat
cool to have “booby-traps.”

CJ jumped and landed on the other side of a
hole.

Behind him, he heard someone yelp and then
scream.

“Aaaaaggghhhh!”

“Leave him!” he heard Dennis hiss.

CJ hoped Dennis had fallen into the hole. He
wanted the man to pay for what he did. That man led these people here. His
parents were dead because of him.

CJ ran towards the nearest trap. It was another
hole, with shredded metal from the old shed placed in its shallow walls. CJ and
his grandfather designed it so that when a zombie fell into it, if it tried to
climb out, it would only tear itself apart in doing so.

There’s the y-shaped tree. It’s close.

He passed the old, dead oak tree, its trunk
split down the middle, two large branches reaching out into the night sky. He
jumped over the hole and waited several feet on the other side.

His three pursuers caught up to him and stopped.

“C’mon kid,” Dennis said between gasping for
air. “We got you. You got nowhere to go.”

“You haven’t caught me yet,” CJ said.

He turned and began to run away. The third man
went to go after CJ.

“No, wait!” Dennis yelled.

But it was too late.

The man took a step forward and slid into the
hole. There was a sound of tearing fabric and flesh. The man screamed and
clawed at the dirt around him. He went to pull himself out, the tearing sound
growing louder. He screamed again as Virginia knelt down to try and pull him
out, only ripping the man’s lower half more to shreds.

CJ looked at Dennis.

“I can do this all night if I have to,” he said,
before turning to run again.

He ran several feet before something hit him in
the back and he fell forward to the ground. Dennis wrapped his arms around CJ
and held him down on the ground.

“You’re not going any-fucking-where,” he said
through clenched teeth.

CJ yelled for help before Dennis was able to clamp
a hand over his mouth.

***

Jeremy heard CJ’s cry for help. It seemed like
he was not that far from them, but the sound bounced off the trees, making it
hard to pinpoint exactly.

“This way,” Jeremy yelled, trusting the feeling
in his gut that told him to run right.

They had been running, but being very careful
not to run into any of the traps set throughout the forest. Jeremy and Lexx
knew they were there, but where exactly, they had no idea.

They found one, but only because one of the
junkies were sticking out of it. The sharpened rebar at the bottom of the hole
had torn through the man’s lower half. Since that discovery, Jeremy and the
others watched their steps carefully.

They ran into a small clearing, the moon filling
the grove with a faint glow. Dennis had CJ pinned to the ground, while Virginia
stood next him, begging him to stop.

“Hey!” Jeremy yelled, raising his rifle.

Dennis turned and looked. He quickly scrambled
backwards, putting CJ between the group and himself, using the boy as a human shield.

“Stay fucking back!” Dennis shouted, pointing
the gun at CJ’s head. “You move and he dies!”

Virginia raised her shotgun reluctantly.

“You!” Jeremy said. “You did all this?!”

Dennis cracked his crooked smile. His jagged
teeth glistened in the moonlight.

“You should have taken us with you. You left us
out there to die and now we’ll take what’s ours. Father Abraham will lead us
into Beulah Land.”

Jeremy lowered his rifle.

“Father Abraham?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes, after you left us, he found us and took us
in. We told him of what you done did, and he promised to lead us to refuge. He
will make you all pay for your sins.”

The man cackled out a few short laughs.

“This Father Abraham, did you leave him at the
house?”

The smile slowly vanished from Dennis’s face.

“Yes…”

“Well, I hate to inform you, but your
Father
is dead,” Jeremy said.

“Wha-what?” Dennis stammered.

Virginia lowered her weapon and began crying.

“Josh chopped him to pieces when he saw what you
did to his family. And my guess is he will do the same to you when he sees
you.”

Dennis was at a loss for words. How could this
be? Father Abraham was sent from God, to lead them into the promised Beulah
land. How could he be dead?

“You’re lying!” Dennis shrieked.

Jeremy shook his head.

“No. No, no, no!”

CJ felt Dennis loosen his grip as he struggled
to accept the news that his messiah was dead. He yanked his arm free and sent
his elbow deep into Dennis’s groin. The man bent over in shooting pain, letting
CJ go completely. The boy ran over to the group and stood behind Jeremy and
Lexx. He eyed the two police officers and their Mexican friend.

Dennis laid in the dirt, crying from the pain
and the truth Jeremy had revealed to him.  These people would kill him for
sure.

“He… He lied to us…” The man croaked. “He made
us do this! He made us murder those people! He said it was their judgment from
God!”

“I don’t know what god that man heard from, but
it wasn’t the one that this family worshipped. And you slaughtered them.”

“Let us go!” Dennis cried, standing to his feet,
still holding his swollen genitals. “Don’t kill us!”

Jeremy considered it. Could he just kill these
people? They had every right to die. They took lives; they should pay with
theirs.

An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth. Isn’t that
what it says?
He
thought.

But killing them, would that make him any
different from them?

There was a small flash of light and a shot rang
out in the woods, shattering the thoughts running through Jeremy’s mind.

A small hole appeared in between Dennis’s
eyebrows, his eyes rolling up to try and look at it. Red blood oozed out of the
small hole down his face. He fell to his knees, then face forward into the
dirt, revealing the gaping exit wound on the back of his head.

Jeremy turned and saw Lexx pointing a pistol.

Virginia screeched and raised her sawn off
shotgun. She fired once, the recoil sending her frail frame backwards. Both
cops opened fire and put her down.

Jeremy continued to stare at Lexx.

“It had to be done,” Lexx said.

Jeremy shook his head. The man was right, but
something still shocked Jeremy that he did it so effortlessly. While Jeremy had
struggled with taking the man’s life, Lexx simply just did it.

“Yeah, but-”

José
’s screaming interrupted him.

He had been the rear of the group the whole
time, closest to the darkness of the trees. With the events unfolding so
quickly in front of him, he had not heard the muffled sounds of footsteps
behind him. By the time they grabbed him, and he screamed, it was too late.

They pulled him down to the ground, the sheer
number of them too much for him to fight. He blindly fired his gun into the
mob, but soon he felt fingernails tear into his stomach. He felt them pull and
tear, his organs leaving his body. In horror, he watched as his intestines were
chewed on, black bile leaking down the faces of his attackers.

The two cops, Jeremy, and Lexx all began firing
at the throng of zombies coming from the woods. Moans and gunfire reverberated
throughout the trees.

“There’s too many!” Jeremy yelled. “Run!”

Tori stood and watched as Josh mourned the loss
of his family. His wife, unborn baby, and everyone save CJ, was dead. He
continued to sob into his wife’s lifeless chest, rubbing his hand across her
stomach.

Tori knew that there was no way the baby
survived.

God, I hope they find CJ,
she thought.

If the boy was gone, Josh might lose it
completely. At least with CJ, Josh would have something to fight for and live
for.

Why would someone do this?

She didn’t buy Abraham’s bullshit. That he was
some messiah-prophet whose job it was to cast judgment on the world? These nut
cases made Tori doubt organized religion to begin with. Josh’s family had
seemed so normal and so kind. They took the three of them in and Tori felt safe
with these people. For Abraham to come in and slaughter them, in the name of
God Almighty, that was pure craziness.

Josh starts crying out loudly. She resists the
urge to tell him to be quiet.

Let him mourn.

Tori sees something move out of the corner of
her eye. She turns quickly, bringing the rifle up.

Oh no…

Behind her, the field is full of approaching
corpses.

“Shit.”

She begins firing into mob. Heads explode,
bodies drop, but the numbers do not dwindle. She has to get them in the house.
She pops off a few more shots, turns, and runs toward Josh. The whole time he
has not moved, hasn’t even acknowledged the imminent threat.

“C’mon, get up!” She yelled, yanking him up from
his wife’s body.

He pulled away from her, his eyes burning with
anger.

“We have to go, Josh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He stared at her and then behind her towards the
zombies. He turned his gaze to his wife and his face softened.

“Leave me,” he said.

“No. If CJ is still alive, he is going to need
you. You are all he has left,” she insisted.

He nodded slowly. She turned, shot several of
the closest zombies, and spun back to him.

“C’mon, into the house,” she said, taking him
gently by the arm.

A sound filled the night, a sound Tori had not
heard in a long time, but a sound Tori would never forget. It was a loud
screeching, like a dying animal fighting for its life. She felt a shiver run
down her spine.

They were pushing their way through the crowd of
slower zombies, shoving their less coordinated brethren to the ground and out
of the way. Even in the dark, the runners seemed to glow in the moonlight.
Their bright pink flesh contrasted with the sea of gray they ran through.

“C’mon!” she yelled, pulling Josh into the
house.

She immediately slammed the door shut and bolted
the door. She dropped the 2x4 brace into its bracket and pushed Josh into the
house.

Man, is this what I was like for Jeremy?
She thought.

She remembered having a hard time getting her
shit together for Jeremy when they were trying to escape the construction
vehicle facility in Savannah. Josh was acting the same way. He was despondent,
unresponsive. She had to think of something fast or the runners would break
through the door in no time. They had to get out of the house now, but make the
runners think they were still in there.

She snapped her finger and sat her gun down.
Running around to all the different rooms, she began to collect all the oil
lamps and started smashing them onto the floor. When she was finished, she went
back to Josh and tried to get him to focus on her.

“Josh? I need you to help me buddy. You with me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You sure? Cause I have an idea to get us out of
here, but I’m going to need you to work with me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

She smiled.

“PB and J.”

A small smile formed on his face, but quickly
faded. He nodded and stood up.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

She picked up her rifle and the two of them ran
towards the kitchen. Tori began pulling out drawers frantically, searching for
anything to ignite the oil.

“Here!” Josh yelled, throwing her a zippo
lighter.

“Good! Now, upstairs!”

As they reached the stairs, the 2x4 on the front
door splintered. The door groaned under the beatings of the runners. It would
not be long before they were through and inside the house.

When they reached the top of the steps, Josh
motioned for his and Laura’s bedroom. Outside their window was a small ledge
that went around to the backside of the house. They could take it to the back
porch and make their jump less severe.

Josh paused in the room, taking it in for the
last time. He motioned for Tori to go ahead through the window. Emotions began
to overflow as he looked at the bed he shared with his wife. The pictures on
the nightstand of him and her beneath the oak tree outside. The ultrasound
picture of his unborn child.

For a second, he considered taking the photos.

Josh lit the lighter and tossed it through the
bedroom door. Below, he heard the sound of the front door bursting inwards. The
lighter tumbled across the wood floor, igniting the oil, until it finally
reached the upstairs balcony’s edge, and fell over into the bottom floor. It
hit in the middle of the living room, the lamp oil catching aflame and lighting
the surrounding furniture. Josh heard the runners scream as the flames reached
above the balcony. He watched the fire burn briefly before turning and running
out the window.

On the end of the ledge, Tori waited for him. He
wasted no time running the ledge.

“You okay?” she asked.

“No.”

He jumped first. He hit the back porch and rolled.
Tori jumped after him and when she hit the deck, he was helping her up. The
back yard area was also crawling with zombies, but they could neither see nor
hear any runners, except for the ones burning inside.

“This way,” he said, pointing in the direction
of the rear shed.

She followed him to the small, wooden structure;
taking out any z’s who got too close for comfort with the butt of her rifle.

It was less of a shed and more of a roof
shelter. It had only one support wall and two posts on the opposite corners to
support the slanted roof. Underneath it was a grey tarp covering something.
Josh pulled the tarp off and revealed a double-seated four-wheel drive vehicle.

“You drive,” he said. “I’ll shoot.”

She handed him the rifle and sat in the front seat.
Tori had driven an ATV before; it had just been a while. While she familiarized
herself with the controls, Josh sat behind her in the second seat. He sat
close, his legs pressed firmly against hers.

She heard the screams behind them. Burning
figures emerged from the house and began sprinting in their direction.

“Go! Go! Go!” Josh yelled.

Tori floored the ATV into the darkness of the
woods, the only light from their headlamps and the moon above the treetops.