The Break Free Trilogy (Book 3): Through The Frozen Dawn

E
mma woke
with a pounding headache that seemed to vibrate with the thrum of her heartbeat. For a moment her world existed in the space between two thumps: her heart, steady and even; then the vicious, skull-splitting explosion of pain that throbbed behind her eyes. And then there was a sharper pain, not a throb but a rasping burn, like fire dancing up and down her leg. The pain of that one night, when the fire really did burn through her skin, clouded her mind until she wasn't sure whether the pain she was feeling now was real, as intense as it felt, or mingled with the memory and all the more unbearable because of it. She knew she was groaning, though it was an after thought. Words and admissions she would have never thought could have flown from her mouth had been pouring out. She heard Anna blame it on the drunkenness and seized on that excuse quickly, feigning that she couldn't remember the things she said.

In all honesty, she remembered too well.

She reached out blindly, groping around her pillow with her eyes clenched tightly. Instead of the cool, glass bottle she was searching for, she met warm fingers instead. She jerked her hand back instinctively.

"Emma," Jack said, his voice low and hesitant. She relaxed. Kaylee must have gone out, left her boyfriend to watch over her drunken sister.

"The vodka, Jack," Emma croaked, "please." She cleared her throat and then grimaced into her pillow as the action caused her headache to pound against her temples. She felt as much as heard him sigh, and then the bottle was there, cool and hard against the heated skin of her fingers. Her gut roiled at the thought of digesting any more alcohol. She took several deep breaths to force her stomach into cooperation, eventually deciding that it just wasn't an option to be sick right then and slugging back a healthy swallow.

"Emma," Jack spoke again and this time, even under the haze of the alcohol that began to slowly swim back into her veins, she could hear the hesitancy in his tone. She cracked her eyes open. The light was flat, the pearly gray light of predawn leaking from the open hatch and the hallway below the attic. She frowned, looking around, her eyes finally settling on Jack.

On just Jack. Not Andrew, or Kaylee. Not Anna, or Bill. Just her and Jack.

"Where are they?" she whispered, her voice coarse and low.

"Gone."

T
hrough the scant
light of the oncoming dawn, Kaylee scanned the exterior of an oppressive building. Large and square, several stories tall, it had once been a Wal-Mart. The blue letters still hung above the doorway.

The entrance doors were covered in plywood. She watched from behind a pile-up of rusting cars as Anna, Bill, and Andrew were unloaded from the bed of the truck. She could see Anna's mouth moving as one of the men prodded her forward with the barrel of his gun. She couldn't hear the words, but she knew what Anna said.

"The Squatters aren't allowed in the South."

Kaylee had heard the words often in the last twelve hours. They kept making Anna repeat it. Over and over and over.

Kaylee had followed them. The men had stolen their truck, so they stuck to the roads. She followed in the woods that lined that cracked pavement. The vegetation was sparse, most of what had flourished was dying out. Fall was taking its last breaths, winter on its heels. It would snow soon. She could taste it in the air. There were no ferns, no brambles to trample through. That meant there was no underbrush to hide in either, should she need it. But the group of men on horseback didn't turn once to see if they were being followed. They weren't quiet, even as much as half a mile behind, Kaylee could hear them.

It wasn't easy keeping pace with the men. It was only sheer luck that allowed her to keep up with them; luck and the fact that the roads were such a mess that the truck couldn't speed up. She tried to get closer to overhear what the men were saying. She thought they might drop a hint to reveal their destination. They never did. She caught the occasional snippet of conversation. Most of it was crude. Too much of it was directed at Anna. Their destination remained a secret, though every one of them seemed to know where they were headed.

The ease with which they traveled made Kaylee nervous. It was as though they knew there would be no barrier, nothing to stop or slow them. They held their guns loose at their sides. No one was scanning the trees, watching for the infected. She was unused to this kind of lapse in surveillance. Her father had always insisted on the utmost caution.

The thought caught her like a punch under the ribs.

Her father. Dead now no longer than a few weeks. In a quick flash, she had pictured his face, disfigured and misshapen, a stranger in the body of the man she adored. He was already cold to the touch when they sent his body down the river in lieu of a burial.

She tried, honestly tried, to remember him as he was. Especially as he was before the infection took over the world. She remembered the way he used to look at her mother, his eyes soft and warm. But the haunted look he adopted after her mother had been bitten, the way he would stare aimlessly out the window at her disease ridden body as she staggered about, rotting in the streets; it eradicated the memory of warmth and security, the way his eyes used to softly glow. And now the image of his final expression, of the bones shifting just beneath the skin, of how cold he felt when she touched him, replaced the warmth. She tried to hold on to the memories of love and happiness, but they were slipping away. Like the water that took her father's body to its final, undetermined resting place; the memory of him, of all of them, before this illness consumed the world was slipping through her clenched fists.

She was grateful Emma hadn't seen him. She didn't want that. She wanted one of them, at least, to remember him for how he really looked, not what he had become.

The thought came unbidden and she pushed it aside as soon as she could. But still it had flashed and taken root, ready to spring at her in any unsuspecting moment.

You may never see her again either.

But no. She would. She had to. Behind her was Jack and Emma and she would get back to them. Ahead of her was the rest of her family, people she loved who were counting on her. She needed to get to them first.

At the first gunshot, Kaylee jumped, sprinting through the woods and sustaining multiple scratches as she burst through the forest towards the road. She careened into an oak tree, her cheek scraping against the rough bark as she peered around it. But none of her friends had been shot. Her eyes sought out the three forms in the truck bed, all twisting around to see where the gunshots had come from. Kaylee's eyes followed theirs just as another crack sounded. A writhing body in the road collapsed, blood seeping from its fractured skull. One of the men on horseback laughed, directing his horse to walk over the prone form. Kaylee could hear the skull crush under hoof.

It happened several more times, staccatos of gunshot piercing the air. The horses barely stirred, accustomed to the random bursts of noise. The more the men fired, the more it seemed necessary. Bodies staggered out of the woods that surrounded them, stumbling towards the loud noises.

The small rustlings of rabbits and squirrels faded as the sky darkened. What remained was the rhythmic pulse of insects, whirring gently amongst the fallen leaves. Kaylee's footsteps were softened on the forest floor, cushioned by layers of composted leaves and newer leaves that were soaked by the three days of pounding rain. They were wet and springy underfoot, muffling the sounds of her boots. She was careful to avoid the dry branches that hung low, stepping around the dried out bush and bramble that would snap and give her away.

The infected were not so careful.

She heard a crash from her right, the telltale groaning that accompanied it, and knew an infected person was stumbling towards the group firing off rounds on the road. The pine tree just in front of her was thick, the lower branches dead and free of needles. The bark was gritty under her fingers. She pulled herself up the tree, keeping her feet tight against the trunk as she used the dried branches for support. They cracked under her boots but didn't give. Twenty feet from the ground the branches sprouted vivid green needles that swayed gently in the light breeze. The air was saturated with resin and she inhaled deeply, calming herself as an infected man stumbled past the base of the tree and fell out unto the road.

The bullet that dropped him went straight through, leaving his head a pulpy mess on the pavement and taking out a chunk of bark with enough force to make the tree tremble underneath her fingers.

He was the last infected person to stumble after the group. The sun set shortly after.

She followed them throughout the night, keeping the truck and riders on horseback in her line of sight as often as possible. It was soon too dark to see them. The last sight of her friends had been a dim outline, three figures knocking into each other, propped in the bed of the pick up truck, before the darkness swallowed them completely. Andrew and Bill had been gagged. Kaylee could just make out the filthy rags that stretched their lips. Anna had not been. They made her talk, repeat the same phrase over and over.

"Come on, pretty," the men snarled, "what'd we teach you?"

"The Squatters aren't allowed in the South," she'd repeat.

"That's right, girlie. You Squatters aren't allowed in the South."

Anna had given up arguing that they had no idea what they were talking about. The men didn't believe her anyway.

They walked until Kaylee felt as though she may collapse. The only light came from the stars and the moon, but the overcast sky smudged it, nearly blotted it out. The men stopped, the truck idling on the side of the road before the engine cut completely. Kaylee heard the sloshing of a water canteen and felt a searing thirst rip through her. But she stayed quiet, crouched low against a tree.

The group had spread out, laying flat on their backs in the middle of the road, leaning up against the truck, one stretching out along the driver's seat and kicking off his boots. They landed on the empty street. Kaylee sucked in a sharp breath as a man walked a line straight towards her. She didn't think she had been seen; his gait was slow and casual, his arms swinging loose by his sides; but if he continued in this direction, she would be seen soon.

She crouched low and moved, her fingers pressing into wet leaves. She kept her eyes trained on him, a dark silhouette whistling lowly. She saw him turn to shout something back to the others on the road. She moved forward quickly, not caring where she went as long as it put a few trees between her and this man. Her foot caught and she plunged forward, her chin catching on something hard and knobby.

The smell alerted her before the rasping breaths. Sickening, like meat left out to rot, her stomach clenched and roiled in protest. The cluster of bodies she had fallen into didn't move when she landed on them. The flesh was cold and waxy, pulling from the bones in sagging heaps. The chests rattled as the lungs drew breath.

A pile of infected bodies, clothing rotting from their limbs, lay dormant in the darkness. Kaylee lay still, her cheek pressed to the cold soil below, the elbow of an infected man rammed against her throat. She felt their breaths shift her body and fought the urge to scream.

The man from the street stopped just feet away. If he saw her, he gave no indication. She heard the metallic bite of his zipper being lowered and the unmistakable sounds of urination followed by a soft sigh.

The bodies she lay amongst held no warmth. Their skin felt dead, rubbery and stiff. It didn't give the way normal skin did. Bones were prominent and poked from beneath their clothing. The air expelling from their lungs was foul. She pressed her nose to the dead foliage of the forest floor and inhaled sharply, grateful for the scent of natural decay that filled her nostrils.

The zipper sounded loud in the still night as the man adjusted himself. Something dropped with a dull thud and he muttered a soft curse. Kaylee spasmed when she heard the click of a flashlight behind her. Even through the tangle of graying limbs, she could see the soft glow of the flashlight circling on the forest floor just behind her. A low growl ripped through a chest, limbs tensing as they sensed the light.

Her mind screamed for him to turn it off. But it seemed to only brighten as he stepped closer to the pile of bodies.

Just by her hip, Kaylee heard teeth grinding together.

The man bent over, the light swinging back towards the road. "Gotcha," he muttered, his fingers rustling through the dead leaves. Moments later the flashlight clicked off and Kaylee heard the flick of a lighter followed by the acrid scent of tobacco. The infected bodies stilled, thrown back into lifelessness as the light faded away. Like children, dead to the world after lights out.

Kaylee felt her own breathing even out. The man walked away after a minute and she was able to carefully extract herself from the group of infected. In the moonlight, she examined them.

Three men, two women, and two children. She could only tell two were women based on their clothing. One wore a dress, the other had a string of pearls embedded in the mangled flesh of her neck. She sat at the base of the tree next to them. The men on the road quieted, settled in for the night. She hoped they would wake before dawn.

The group next to Kaylee in the forest definitely would.

She wondered if she should kill them.

When she lived in the firehouse, she watched the infected, her mother included, wander about all day long, beating into the sides of her home. She never contemplated killing them. It had seemed so wrong. They were people. Sick people. But still, people. And wasn't killing wrong?

She knew murder was wrong. But if it were self-defense? Jack had asked her that once. It wasn't wrong to kill someone who was trying to hurt you, even if they were out of their mind.

Her eyes drifted over the people lying beside her. They were no threat to her now. In a few hours, they would attempt to devour her; but now, they were harmless. Killing them wouldn't be self-defense.

But it might be merciful.

They sucked air in rasping breaths, their lungs struggling. Bones stuck through rotting skin at painful angles. These had been people once. Truly alive people. They probably had jobs and families, things they cared about. Now they were roving animals, hunting flesh in the woods.

She wouldn't want that for herself. She wouldn't want to be forced to wander, killing, eating raw flesh, and destroying everything around her. She would want to be put out of that misery.

It was with that thought that she dragged herself to a stand. She scanned the dark, forest floor, her eyes landing on a fallen branch. It had broken from the tree, leaving the end a jagged mess. It was solid and heavy in her hands. She positioned it like a spear, like the javelin she had once thrown for her school's track team. The tip was pointing down though, at the soft eye socket of the nearest infected. With a forceful jab, she pierced the branch through his eye, the wood shuddering to a stop when the point connected with the back of the skull. The man stopped breathing, his body shifting a bit as Kaylee drew the branch out. He didn't move other than that.

Before she lost her nerve, she killed the others laying in the pile. Soft shudders and sighing last breaths came after each piercing of the branch. When it was done, she tossed the wood aside, strode ten feet closer to the road, rest her back against a large tree, and closed her eyes.