The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (36 page)

Katherine cautiously opened her eyes from
where she lay in a heap on the floor. She had unwittingly played
possum, her muscles frozen by the utter terror that consumed her
mind. She had passed out briefly when one of the M80s grabbed her
by the hair, although now her senses were returning to her and she
was trembling with fear. Three feet away from her Angela was
stirring as consciousness returned slowly to her. The little girl’s
brown eyes were open and looking at her. Katy put a finger to her
lips and motioned the girl to be quiet before she could alert the
creatures. They could hear the things deeper in the house as they
tore it apart in some mindless rage driven quest.

She looked past the little girl and saw what
remained of Melody in the hallway and stifled a sob when she saw
the woman’s ruined face. She quietly mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ to the
dead woman. Angela turned her head and let out a startled gasp when
she saw the dead M80 lying in a pool of blood next to her. Katy
shushed the little girl again and sat up, keeping her eyes on the
hallway for any movement. She spotted Melody’s gun lying just out
of reach of her lifeless fingers. She thought back to earlier in
the morning when Steven had been showing the woman how to operate
the rifle, but Katy had deliberately ignored the lesson.

I
can
figure
it
out
, she told herself as she eyed the weapon, her fear of it
overwhelmed by the fear of the creatures now trashing the house. On
hands and knees she crawled past Angela, who sat up questioningly.
She tried not to look at the savaged head of her dead friend as she
crept by, her hands slipping through the thick congealing blood.
She couldn’t help but steal a glance at her though. Katy felt the
bile rise in her throat at the sight and hurriedly scurried past
the corpse. She picked up the rifle. It felt cold and heavy in her
hands. She sat with her back against the wall and peered at all the
levers and switches. She shook her head in bewilderment and hoped
silently that if she simply pulled the trigger it would fire.
Angela crawled up next to her and buried her face in Katy’s lap,
her body wracked with sobs.

Please
let
it
shoot
, Katy prayed when the sounds of the M80s drew closer
to the kitchen. She hefted the rifle to her shoulder and
waited.

Kera was near the front of the store stuffing
batteries into her pack when she thought she heard the sound of a
far off gunshot. She threw the pack on her back, picked up her
shotgun, and raced to the open doors at the front of the store,
shielding her eyes from the bright daylight. Nothing moved on the
snow covered landscape or back in the direction of the houses. She
stood there a few moments and was about to dismiss it as being her
imagination at work when she heard two muffled, yet discernable
gunshots in the distance.

Oh
shit
! she thought and raced
back into the store, yelling for her companions.

The three raced out the Target’s front
entrance and through the slush-filled parking lot, sprinting for
the distant line of rooftops that marked the neighborhood where
their appropriated house was located. As they crossed a rock lined
drainage trench at the edge of the parking lot, Kera slipped on the
snow and ice-covered boulders and fell with a cry of pain in a
twisted heap between two of the gray rocks. Dontela was right
behind her and quickly helped her to her feet while Steven caught
up with them.

“It’s my knee,” Kera grimaced as Dontela sat
her on the embankment and she clasped the knee to her chest.

“Can you walk?” Steven asked her. They helped
her to her feet again and she tentatively put weight on the injured
leg, letting out a gasp when pain shot through the knee. She shook
her head.

Tears of pain welled in Kera’s eyes as the
two helped her up the snow-covered embankment to the curb where she
sat down gracelessly in the slushy snow. She pulled up her pant leg
and they could all see the swelling in the knee.

“Shit!” she cursed, then glanced up at her
companions. “I’m sorry! That was stupid and clumsy of me!”

“It was an accident, it could have happened
to any of us,” Steven consoled her.

‘You guys go on. I’ll catch up to you,” she
told them, massaging the joint.

Steven shook his head. “We’re not leaving
you, Kera.”

“Something is wrong at the house. You gotta
go, there’s no time to waste!”

“Come on,” Dontela said, lifting Kera to her
feet. “I’ll help you. Steve, you run ahead and see what’s going
on.”

Steven hesitated for a moment then bent down
and kissed Kera on the lips. “Are you sure?”

She nodded her head and tried to smile
through the pain that was apparent in her face. Steven gently
touched her cheek then raced off toward the distant houses. She
watched him retreat through a small copse of trees as she tried to
flex her painful, swelling knee. She had to be more careful, she
admonished herself. In this new world, small accidents could lead
to terrible consequences. Plus, it wasn’t solely her she had to
worry about anymore. She placed a hand on her belly, as if she
could feel the life growing there.

Steven had no idea what to expect at the
house. Kera hadn’t even been sure if that was where the shots had
come from. She knew that in all probability the chance of it
not
being someone in their group doing the shooting in their
immediate area was slim.

He approached the house obliquely and ducked
into the carport, instantly spying the open door that led to the
garage and felt a knot of trepidation tighten in his stomach. His
pace picked up and he flew through the open door into the dark
garage. The framed glass was broken out of the door that led into
the kitchen and before he could take another step a series of
gunshots reverberated from within the interior of the house.

Katherine had the rifle cradled in her arms.
Angela lay sniffling with her head in the older girl’s lap when the
muscular M80 appeared at the end of the hall. It didn’t notice the
two girls at first, as its attention was focused in the room it was
rampaging through, but then its head swiveled and its dark,
red-tinged eyes zeroed in on the two and a menacing growl formed
deep in the back of its throat. With incredible speed it propelled
itself down the hall in large bounds. Katy immediately and
repeatedly pulled the rifle’s trigger and shots ripped down the
hallway past the swiftly closing monster. Finally she saw a round
tear through the thick covering of cloth it wore as clothing, near
its right knee, and the leg buckled just as it prepared for a final
bounding leap. It stumbled sideways and impacted the wall heavily.
She kept pulling the trigger as it landed next to her, its snapping
jaws barely a foot away. One of her rounds found its mark and the
crazy’s right eye burst inward, the bullet exploding out the back
of its head, spraying a red, gory mess across the white painted
wall. She continued pulling the trigger even after the last round
had been fired. She heard a shrill screaming in her head and
realized it was her own screams mixed in with those of the little
girls, who was shrieking hysterically next to her.

She looked up from the dead M80 and saw more
approaching at a run from the living room. She yanked on the
trigger again and nothing happened. From over her shoulder, she
heard a loud blast and the lead M80, another male, collapsed to its
knees, a red flower blooming on the cloth that covered its chest.
It was violently slammed forward onto the floor when the M80 behind
it ran over it in her mad lust to get to the girls. There were more
blasts and the screaming girls watched the woman’s throat exploded
while another bullet blew apart her jaw. The M80s behind her tried
to pile past the accumulating bodies, only to be dealt the same
fate. Within seconds it was over and a pile of corpses lay crumpled
and bleeding in the hallway.

The screams slowly died in the two girls’
throats, leaving a shrill ringing in their ears. Suddenly Katy felt
a hand on her shoulder, eliciting another scream from her lips as
she instinctively threw herself flat on the floor dragging Angela
with her.

“It’s okay! It’s me!” Steven said firmly,
kneeling down. Angela bounded up and threw herself into his arms
with a sob.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, hugging the little
girl back. She shook her head she cried convulsively.

“Are you okay, Katy?” he asked the other
girl, who lay on her side looking at him with a shocked
expression.

“I’m okay. They killed Melody,” she told him
in a broken whisper.

Steven patted Angela on the back, shushing
her, trying to calm her down.

“Are there any more of them?”

“I don’t know,” Katy answered him. “I don’t
think so.”

He stood up with the sobbing girl clinging
tightly to him. He let his rifle hang from its sling, lifted the
girl off of him and handed her to Katherine. “Take her into the
living room away from this mess and see if you can get her calmed
down.”

Still holding the rifle with one hand, Katy
took Angela into her other arm and stepped through the carnage back
down the hallway. When they disappeared around the corner into the
living room, Steven turned right when Dontela, supporting the
limping Kera, stepped through the open door.

“Oh fuck me!” Dontela exclaimed when she saw
the bloodbath. Then she gasped when she spotted the form of Melody
in the hallway. She left Kera leaning against the wall and darted
to the woman’s side.

“Aww no,” she moaned, and glanced back at
Steven with tears in her eyes. “Angela?” she asked in a choked
voice.

“Angela and Katy are okay,” he reassured
her.

“They’re coming,” Kera whispered weakly,
unable to tear her eyes away from the dead woman with the mutilated
face.
It
isn’t
fair
, she thought, her own face
growing pale.
She
had
already
gone
through
so
much
,
she
didn’t
deserve
this
.

“What?” Steven asked.

“Oh shit! I almost forgot!” Dontela said
urgently. “There’s a huge crowd of M80s headin’ this way from
across the highway.”

“They must have been drawn by the noise,”
Steven surmised, pushing past Kera and out to the garage. He closed
and locked the exterior door then rushed back inside. Dontela had
gone into the other room with Katy and Angela. Kera still leaned
against the wall, silent tears streaking down her face.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently, putting his
arm around her for support.

She nodded and buried her face into his
shoulder.

“Come on, let’s go in with the others and
hope that Loony horde didn’t hear exactly where the shots came
from.”

He helped her down the hallway and into the
living room, and laid her across the couch with a pillow under her
knee. Outside they could hear the murmur of a multitude of voices
in the distance, coming their way.

“Everyone be quiet and don’t move around,” he
whispered to them. “The noises got them stirred up, although I
don’t think they have any idea where the shots came from. We’ll be
safe here as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

He crept over to the window and peeked out
between the drapes at several thousand Loonies moving up the road
and then veering off toward the Target shopping center. It looked
like the crowd of insane humans passing by would never end.
Finally, only the stragglers or very old or injured were passing,
and then they too disappeared from sight.

He and Dontela dragged the bodies of the dead
Loonies into the garage and piled them like cordwood into a corner.
They debated what to do with their friend’s body. In the end they
decided that with the large horde somewhere outside it was better
to put her in the garage along with the Loonies and cover her with
a blanket.

“How could there be a God who let that poor
woman suffer the way she did, and then let those things kill her?”
Dontela wondered in a whisper, staring down sadly at Melody’s
covered corpse.

Steven shrugged. “Maybe she’s the lucky one,”
he said after a moment.

Dontela stared at him in disbelief. “You
can’t believe that?”

“Some days, I really do.”

They gathered back in the living room, a
quiet, sullen group lost in their own unhappy thoughts, praying for
safety that would never really come.

After a while, Steven caught Katherine’s eye
and motioned her over. She left Dontela holding the sleeping form
of Angela and sat next to Steven on the floor in front of the
couch.

“Did you close the door to the garage after
we left?” he asked her quietly.

“Yes. We closed it tight,” she answered
without hesitation.

“Then they’re learning to open doors,” he
whispered in dismay.

“There’s more than that,” Katy said. “When
they broke in, Angela was unconscious and I played dead. They kind
of prodded us to see if we would move and then lost interest. It’s
like they thought we were dead and we no longer existed to them.
They left us alone.”

“Playing possum?” Steven mumbled, his eyes
growing wide in realization of what she was telling him. “I never
even thought to do that. I mean, who would have ever wanted to be
the test case?” He paused in thought. “We can hide in plain sight
from them by simply playing dead. That’s an invaluable lesson you
learned for us. Thank you.” He smiled at her and squeezed her
shoulder. “You did really good today.”

She smiled sadly back. “Not that I would want
to try that again.”

Chapter Twelve

Heinlich strung the last tripwire and attached the
end securely to an electrical conduit on the nearby wall. That was
the last of the two Willy-Pete IEDs that they had placed in this
building, which one of the swarms was currently using for their
nest. Reese gave him a thumbs-up signal that the bombs were armed
and backed away from the containers, carefully stepped over one of
the tripwires, and sped past a handful of bodies of the pregnant
crazies that they had had to neutralize when they entered the
building. Carroll and Pickeral were guarding the building’s open
door, their weapons trained out into the glaring sunshine which
reflected off of the bright-white cover of melting snow as both
Reese and the Sergeant raced up to them.