The Zombie Chronicles - Book 5 - Undead Nightmare (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (9 page)

“
Some risks are worth taking,” I said, smiling down at her. “You make life worth fighting for, Jackie. I’d die before I’d let anything happen to you or my brother and sister,” I said.

“
Dean, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

I gazed into her eyes. “Good, because I mean every word of it.”

She cupped my face with her hands. “I’m so glad I met you, in spite of the circumstances.”

“Me too.”

“We just crossed a bridge.”

“Uh…yeah.”

“No, I mean…well, it seems like there’s more to it than that.”

“Huh? How so?” I asked, cocking a brow.

“Well, it seems symbolic. We’re going through a real-life journey, Dean, and no matter how deep and dark of a void we might have to face, we can always find a way to overcome it.”

Jackie always seemed to have a positive attitude and read a lot into life, and that was just one thing I loved about her. “Hmm. You’re right,” I said.

She grinned and squeezed my hand. “You were awesome back there, Dean. I’ve never been more proud of you.”

“It was a team effort,” I said, “not a one-man performance.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but you were the star of the show.”

I gave her hand a squeeze as my boots crunched through the leafy vegetation. As we hiked along, neither Jackie nor I said another word, but we didn’t have to. Somehow, she made me special, like no other girl had before, and that made everything so much easier in a very cruel and difficult world.

Chapter 7

After a while, I took the lead through the dense foliage; after I’d proven myself back on the bridge, Nick and Val didn’t seem so reluctant to follow their little brother. The tree canopy rose high and thick, and the ferns grew sparse, giving the jungle the impression of a great, green cathedral. Birds chirped overhead, and insects hummed and clicked in the thickets and grass; I was a bit jealous of the animals, who seemed oblivious to the horror that was unfolding on the planet we shared with them. My breathing was labored, but we steadily moved along. We pushed through the thick undergrowth, moving quickly and quietly, still hoping to find a city where we could find antibiotics and a vehicle. We limited our noise to the inevitable thudding of our feet and the snapping of twigs against our clothes and underfoot. Anxiously, I brushed away the ferns, leaves, and vines and stepped over fallen, moss-covered logs, all of us ever alert for signs of danger. A loud
snap
of a twig caused us all to stop and investigate, but we were relieved to find that it was only a curious, bushy-tailed squirrel.

I gently pushed Jackie’s hair out of her face as I placed a peck on her heated cheek. “Doing okay?” I whispered, handing her a thermos of water.

She nodded and took a long swig, then handed it back to me. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

“Thank Lucas,” I said. “He thought to pack it.” I took a few gulps and kept moving.

Finally, we broke through the woods to a clearing and saw signs of civilization in front of us. We cautiously made our way into the town, around a brick building. Peeking through the tangle of overgrown weeds, I scanned the city in front of me. The place was deserted, the streets devoid of life. Rows of long-abandoned buildings were dark and empty, and the storefronts were unkempt; the windows were boarded up, weeds were overgrown, glass was broken, and all the paint was peeling. It would have been a great place to film a horror movie, but it was, unfortunately, all too real, and that quiet, eerily vacant ghost town gave me very real goosebumps that I never would have felt in a movie theater.

When my gaze turned to Lucas, I couldn’t help but notice that he was in worse shape than he’d ever admit to any of us. Droplets of sweat rolled down his blotchy red face, and I knew he was burning up. “Lucas looks horrible,” I whispered. “We need to find shelter and some meds…and quick.”

Nick felt Lucas’s clammy forehead grimaced. “How you doin’, buddy?”

“I feel like I’m inside an oven,” Lucas whispered.

“You guys stay here with him,” Nick said to me, Claire, and Jackie. “I’ll take Val, Kate, and Asia to find a secure place and look for some kind of antibiotics. Be careful. We’ll be back soon.”

“Got it,” I said, giving him no argument, and the four of them walked away.

***

About an hour later, Nick came back and led us to the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles office, a cold, nasty place that even zombies apparently avoided; all things considered, we couldn’t really blame them. “We didn’t find any gassed-up cars, but we’re bound to find one somewhere in this town.”

We laid Lucas down on the bench in the waiting area, and he groaned as he tried to get comfortable.

Behind the counter were a few desks, and the place was only dimly lit by the light coming in through the high windows; it was somewhat of an added bonus that the windows weren’t too low to the ground.

“We could probably spend the night here with no trouble,” Kate asked.

“I-I don’t know about that,” Lucas stammered.

“Why?”

“Because it’s hotter than the lake of fire in here, and the air conditioner is on the fritz,” he said, giving her a weak half-smile.

I had to admire the guy; even burning up with a fever, facing a zombie apocalypse, and suffering from a possibly life-threatening infection, he still had jokes.

“Shh,” Val said, moving the hair off his sweaty forehead. “It’s hot because you’re burning up and the air conditioner isn’t working because there’s no electricity. You need to rest,” she said in a more nurturing tone.

“Let’s just find the lab,” Jackie said. “Lucas can rest here, and when we find some wheels and the medicine he needs, we’ll come back to get him. We’ll all be much safer once we’re on the road.”

Lucas began to laugh deliriously.

“Gosh. His fever is getting the best of him,” Val said. “We’ve gotta hurry and—”

“No, no…it isn’t that,” he stammered. “It’s just that…she’s, uh…talking about grand theft auto while we’re sitting in the BMV. Don’t you find that…isn’t it a little…ironic,” he said, but he couldn’t even smile this time, and his eyes began to roll back in his head.

“Lucas!” Val screamed, gently rubbing his forehead. She looked up at us in desperation. “Like I said, we’ve gotta hurry.”

“I don’t wanna stay in this town,” Asia said. “I’m all for hauling our butts out of here. Can’t we just find a vehicle, and then get Lucas some medicine once we get to the lab? They’re bound to have antibiotics and Lucas can rest in the car. Prancing around town looking for a pharmacy is wasting time.”

“What if we stay the night and search this place high and low and turn up nothing?” Kate said. “We definitely know the lab will have medicine.”

Jackie sighed. “The lab is not a pharmacy.”

Val shook her head. “We need medicine now. I don’t think waiting until we get to the lab is a good idea. Especially with all the problems we could run into, like herds or downed trees blocking roads, it could take two or three days to get to the lab. And what if we have to hide out for a few days for some unknown reason? Lucas could be…it might be too late for him by then.”

“Val’s right,” Claire said. “We didn’t plan on staying at that nursing home, but the flood and the storm forced us to. Something like that could easily happen again. We can’t take any chances with Lucas’s wellbeing.”

“I won’t risk Lucas’s life,” Nick said. “He’s my best friend.”

Lucas’s eyes finally fluttered back open. “Why couldn’t they have stabbed me back at the old folks home? That place had an entire pharmacy.”

“Murphy’s Law,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

He closed his eyes as sweat dripped down his chin. “Yeah…go figure.”

“There’s gotta be a pharmacy or drugstore here somewhere, right?” I said.

“Sure,” Val said. “If worse comes to worst, we could find a vet. They have antibiotics for animals.”

“Very funny, Val,” Lucas whispered. “I know you don’t think all that highly of me, but calling me a dog is just—”

“Hush,” she scolded. “I’m serious. We’d just have to adjust the dosage, that’s all.”

“I’m so sorry to be such a pain,” Lucas said, breathing heavily.

“You’re not,” she said.

“I’m seeing stars,” he said, barely conscious. “Lots and lots of light and stars. I think I’m…”

“Lucas?” Val asked, shaking him a bit. She looked up at us in a panic. “He’s out cold,” she said frantically. “We need to find him some medicine ASAP, or we’re gonna lose him.”

Nick’s gaze hardened for a moment, as if he was ready for battle. “Claire, can you stay with Lucas so he can rest?”

“Uh…sure,” she said, sounding a bit nervous.

“Good. We’ll leave you with the gun, but you should be pretty safe in here. The rest of you, let’s split up in two teams,” he said. “Dean, you take Val and Kate, and Jackie and Asia can come with me.”

Val glanced up at him. “So what? You trust me now?”

“You shouldn’t take it personally, sis. That serum was coursing through your veins, and we just didn’t know what it was gonna do to you.” His gaze drifted to me and Kate. “Keep a close eye on her, little brother.”

“Nick, you know I’d never hurt them,” Val said softly.

“Not intentionally,” he said, “but things are different now. Not everything is in our control.”

“Right,” she said. She gently laid Lucas’s hand on his chest and got up.

We said our goodbyes to Claire, Nick, and Asia, and as soon as my brother deemed it was clear, the two girls and I made our way outside. I stopped in the doorway to kiss Jackie goodbye, and as soon as the others disappeared around the corner of the building, I motioned my team to take off in the other direction.

We hid in a group of bushes, then darted across the street into a patch of towering ferns. A light
thud
from behind made me swing around, my heart thumping, but I was relieved to find that it was only coming from branches swaying in the wind, hitting the shutters behind me. We weaved slowly between trees, cars, buildings, and vegetation, until we turned the corner and saw a building with a huge, horizontal, black-tinted window. Small, tinted windows were on each side, but all the glass was littered with bullet holes. The sign above the front door read, “Max and Tina’s.”

Kate pointed straight ahead. “I say we start right there,” she whispered.

“We need antibiotics,” I said, “not a cheeseburger.”

“A cheeseburger sounds good to me,” she said, “but what we really need is a phonebook to look up the address of the pharmacy so we don’t waste time hunting for the darn thing.”

I sighed. “This town isn’t that big,” I said.

“I know, but every precious second counts,” Kate said. “You saw how bad Lucas looked back there.”

“She’s right,” Val said. “Some
Yellow Pages
would be great, since we can’t exactly Google it.” She peered in through the small bullet holes. “I don’t see anything. I’m gonna go in and check it out.”

“Lemme just double-check,” Val said, glancing in one more time “I don’t see anything moving around, but we need to break out a window just to be sure.”

Kate spun around. “Don’t break the big one. It’ll make way too much noise.”

Nodding in agreement, I swung the bat at one of the smaller windows, shattering the glass.

“Nice, slugger,” Val said, clapping.

Blood dripped from my hand, and I wiped it on my jeans.

“Whoa! Are you all right?” Kate said.

“Meh, it may as well be a paper cut. I’m fine. Can you stay out here as a lookout?”

“Sure,” Kate said bravely, squinting against the sunlight. “Got plenty of practice doing that last night while you were up on the roof with As—”

“Good. Thanks,” I said, cutting her off. “C’mon, Val.” I kicked out the rest of the glass so my sister could crawl in, and then I followed behind her.

Inside the restaurant, the stench of rot was overwhelming. My boots crunched glass with every step I took, and as I glanced around, I gripped the bat tight in my hands.

“Looks like there’s an office upstairs,” Val said.

“It’s too big of a risk to take just for a phonebook.”

“True.”

“You see any flashlights, guns, weapons, or ammo? Anything we might be able to use?” I asked, knowing she had spectacular night vision.

“Nope, nothing like that.”

“Just our luck.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard a noise coming from the back, and my senses went into overdrive. “What the heck was that?”

She let out a long breath. “Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”

“Let’s go. We don’t have time to fight zombies unnecessarily,” I said, tugging at her sleeve.

She didn’t answer, and everything was suddenly quiet—too quiet.

“Val,” I whispered, “what do you see?”

“Zombies.”

My stomach clenched. “Then let’s get outta here! I know this is a restaurant, but I don’t wanna be on the menu.”

She gripped my shoulder. “They’re dead, Dean.”