Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (25 page)

When I pulled on the ax, the ghoul came with it, dangerously close. It reached out, grabbed the lapel of my heavy jacket, and without hesitation, it hauled on me with more strength than any human body, dead or alive, should be able to muster. I wrenched the ax sideways and pushed it with both hands across the creature’s jaw, lodging the handle in its teeth and neutralizing it for the moment. I had enough strength left to keep it at bay, but I couldn’t hold it forever, and the other two were just feet away.

One of the many lessons Gabriel taught me about fighting the undead is that it is never a good idea to throw them. Unlike living people, they don’t care if you fling them ass-over-head. Nothing hurts them. And nearly every throwing technique imaginable, from a shoulder toss to a rolling hip-lock, brings them within biting distance—something you never, ever want to happen. A trip, a sweep, or a knockdown blow from a well-aimed boot is always a better option.

But in this case, I didn’t have much of a choice. The other two walkers were closing in, and the one in front of me wouldn’t be denied his feast for much longer. So I opted for
the only option I had available. I backed off a step, pulled the ghoul’s head against me to trap the ax handle between my chest and its jaw, and rolled into what was quite possibly the sloppiest hip-toss I’ve ever thrown.

It worked, sort of. The creature flipped over and slammed onto its back. I managed to keep my feet beneath me, and landed with a knee on its chest, pinning it to the ground. Unfortunately, my back was to the other two, and I could practically feel their rotten hands growing inexorably closer. Meanwhile, the ghoul I was sitting on had maintained its grip on my jacket, and was pulling with everything it had to bring my face closer to its mouth. I didn’t have time to rip the jacket off, so I seized the arm holding me, trapped its wrist beneath my armpit with its elbow on my knee, and leaned down.

The limp snapped like a twig, and while the bastard’s grip didn’t loosen, the downward pressure finally let up. It kept trying to pull, but with the bones between its upper and lower arms disconnected, the muscles had no leverage. Gripping the ghoul’s wrist with one hand, I stood halfway up and pivoted on my knee to face the last two walkers.

They were closer than I thought.

The one in front—squat, fat, and obviously long dead—reached out and was only a foot away from gripping my shoulders. I couldn’t shrug out of the jacket in time, and if it got its hands on me, I was done for. My mind scrambled desperately for an idea, some way to escape. And then I remembered that I still had my fighting knife on my belt. Reaching down, I drew it, gripped it hard, and waited. The walker’s hands were just brushing the fabric of my coat when I struck with as much force as I could muster, driving the blade upward through walker’s soft palate and into its brain. As it stiffened, I gave the knife a hard twist that sent syrupy black ichor running down my glove, and the ghoul went limp. As it fell, I pushed it away from me. The knife, however, was stuck fast in its skull, forcing me to let it go.

One more down, but my problems weren’t over yet. The last ghoul followed close behind and lunged for me. I snatched the ax up from where it lay on the corpse beneath me, and lacking
enough room to swing it, I shoved it against my attacker’s throat. The viselike squeeze of its hands gripped my shoulders, iron fingers gouging painfully into my skin. I let out a hoarse shout of pain and fear, and shoved it back as hard as I could, a desperate surge of adrenaline lending strength to my arms. It wouldn’t last long, and I knew I didn’t have much time to come up with something.

Rocking my weight to the left, I lifted up my right leg, planted my foot in the ghoul’s waist, and rolled backward, letting my arms go slack as I did. The combined push-pull effect from the walker’s arms and my outstretched leg sent the creature flipping over my head to land with a solid thump. For a couple of precious seconds, it lay immobile—probably trying to figure out what the hell just happened—and gave me the chance I needed to unzip my jacket and shrug my arms free. 

Rolling to one side, I got up and sprinted about twenty yards away. When I turned back around, the two ghouls were also standing again and, as they always do, they were coming for me. The broken arm of the first one I had fought dangled uselessly from the elbow, the skin holding it together stretched and twisted. I stood up straight and filled my lungs with deep breaths: once, twice, three times. The adrenaline began to subside, leaving me weakened and shaky.

I needed a rest. I needed water. I needed something to eat, and I needed to wash the damned stinking gore-splatter off my clothes. But none of that was going to happen until I finished the job in front of me. The urge to pull the Sig returned more strongly than before, but again, I fought it down. There was no need, all I had to do was let these two meat sacks chase me a little ways, then run around them and retrieve my ax. I could see it lying on the ground next to the walker with a black Krylon knife-handle protruding from its lower jaw.

I pulled on my elbows to stretch my arms and back, touched my toes to ward off a cramp that was threatening my left hamstring, and walked quickly around behind the last two ghouls. With my weapon back in my hand, I felt the panic that had gripped me just a few short moments ago fade away, and in its place, a hot, burning anger began to take hold.

I had been dealing with this shit for more than two years. Two years of nightmares, and fear, and wondering if each day was going to be my last. All because these motherfuckers were
hungry
. Because they were mindless, and stupid, and cared for nothing but the endless, driving need that gnawed away at their rotten guts. It had consumed the world, that ravenousness, and all the pain and hardship I had endured as a result was
their fucking fault.
Even worse than that was the knowledge that after everything I had been through, everything I had survived, I almost got my ticket punched in some nameless, shithole backwater in middle-of-nowhere Tennessee because I got cocky, and complacent, and bit off a little more than I could chew.

It was a gut-check mo
ment. No more fucking around.

I walked up to the one with the broken arm and cleaved its head in half, swinging so hard that the blade went through cranium, sinus cavity, and jaw, and lodged in the creature’s spine. It fell, and I let the ax go with it.

One left.

I let it get close enough to almost grab me, then seized its wrist, placed a palm against its elbow, and with a quick twisting, pulling step I slammed it down onto its face. Raising my boot,
I stomped down hard onto the back of its neck, stomp after stomp, until I felt a crunch. Two more stomps for good measure, and I stepped away.

Behind me, I heard another moan.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Turning around, I saw the tattooed kid whose knee I had sheared nearly in two. He was still pursuing me, pushing himself across the ground with his good leg while pulling with his arms. I laughed, grabbed the handle of my ax, and after a little wrenching back and forth, pulled it free.

“I’ll give you this much, you’re a persistent fucker.”

Stopping a few feet away from him, I stood watching, the ax held loosely at my waist.

“What was your name, huh?”

It responded by leaning up, fixing its milky white eyes on me, and croaking. I lowered my voice into my best Samuel L. Jackson.

“That don’t sound like no name I ever heard of.”

It gripped the ground and pulled itself closer, its face contorting in hunger. It slid a few feet, then fell down as its grip faltered in the loose dirt.

“I’m sorry, did I break yo’ concentration?”

It moaned, kicked with renewed vigor at the sound of my voice, then went silent as it reached forward and dug its fingers into the ground again.

“Oh, you were finished? Well, allow me to retort.”

The ax swung down, and the walker went still.

I walked back over to my pack, grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and wiped down the blade, going over the handle as well just to be safe. When I finished, I held it up and looked at my grainy, distorted reflection in its surface.

“When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.”

The ax was no AK-47. And yes, I was switching movies. But hey, you take your laughs where you can get them.

Goode Brothers Feed and Supply had seen better days.

One of six units in a bland, slowly collapsing strip mall that looked like it had been built in the late-seventies, the store had been looted down to everything but the shelves. And even a few of those looked to have been ripped out. The sign over the door was broken and filthy, with several of the letters tipped on their sides, or hanging upside down. Glass littered the pavement out front where the windows had been shattered, and a single Ford pickup with flat, rotten tires stood lonely vigil in the parking lot.

My habitual urge to search the truck, the buildings in front of me, and all of the residences nearby itched like a mosquito bite, and tugged at the avaricious, lizard part of my brain that got a kick out of scavenging in places like this. There were probably guns, food, clothing, tools, ammunition, toilet paper, and who knew what else just waiting for some enterprising soul to come along and collect them. But with the schedule I had to keep, I would have to settle for simply remembering this place for another time. Assuming I lived long enough to come back for it.

Crunching over the glass, I walked into the shredded store and went toward the back where Grayson Morrow had instructed me to look for the manager’s office. It was around a corner behind the checkout counter, and to reach it, I had to step over a busted cash register that lay next to a white skeleton with a huge chunk of its skull missing. If the bullet casings nearby were any sign, it looked like whoever this person was, he had died defending the store. By the condition of the clothes, and the lack of stench, I guessed that the poor fellow had been sitting there since the early days of the Outbreak.

“Tough break, pal,” I said, giving the bony shoulder a sympathetic pat. “Should have just let them have this shit. Maybe you’d still be alive.”

I looked over my shoulder through what was left of the front windows, took in the bare branches clawing at the sky in the distance, the creak of rotting wood, and the fetid odor of corpses blowing along in the icy breeze. I felt a wry chuckle shake itself out of me.

“Or maybe not. You’re not missing much.”

The door to the office opened with a push, and the desk I had come here to search stood near the back wall. I opened the top drawer and found a single piece of white cloth folded into a neat square a little bigger than my palm. Taking it out, I unfolded it and studied it in the light through the window. It was a little larger than a square foot, and drawn with careful attention to detail. A legend on the bottom explained what the various symbols meant, and there was even a rough estimate of the distances involved. On the back, Morrow had scribbled a few notes about the people who worked in different areas of the Legion’s compound, the leadership structure, and
guards he thought he could bribe into helping him escape. Even though it had ended badly for him, I had to give the kid credit. It was a well thought-out plan.

I folded the map, sealed it in a plastic sandwich bag, and stashed it in my pack. Studying it would have to wait until I had found a place to rest for the evening. Back at the front of the store, I stepped over the cash register and the skeleton again, and paused on my way out.

“Do me a favor, will you?” I said, looking down at the broken skull. “If you happen to run into a guy named Michael Riordan, or his wife Julia, tell them Eric sends his love, okay?”

The skull stared back in silence.

“All right, then. You take it easy, partner. If I come back around this way, I’ll see about giving you a proper burial.”

I tipped an imaginary hat to the pile of bones, adjusted my pack, and left the town with no name behind.

*****

Four miles and a little over an hour later, I saw something that I hadn’t seen in well over a year.

A dog.

I had reached the halfway point of where I planned to travel for the day, and the wide, grassy fields I had been traversing had given way to sparse woodland and abandoned clusters of houses. Where I stood, I was knee-deep in grass that had once been someone’s back yard. The plan had been to cut across the yard to a gravel road that would provide smoother walking for the next few miles. When I was halfway across, the dog stepped out from behind a toolshed, spotted me, and froze in his tracks.

I think he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

The canine population in North America, and probably the rest of the world, had been all but annihilated during the Outbreak. Most dogs, lacking the ability to hunt, and dependent upon their human masters to provide for them, had either starved to death or fallen prey to the infected during the first brutal months of the Outbreak. Additionally, dogs tend to bark like crazy when the infected are nearby, which does nothing to improve their chances of survival. Because of this, most humans drive them off if they come near. Assuming, of course, that they don’t simply kill them for their meat. As a consequence, only the toughest, smartest dogs survived, and they had no love for humans, alive or dead.