The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (6 page)

Another woman was stretched out over a log on
her stomach near the fire. Wooden stakes had been driven into the
ground shoulder width apart and her outstretched arms were bound
tightly to these while her ankles were tied to a long tree limb
that had been placed between them, keeping her legs spread apart.
She faced away from them and her short, dark hair was a tangle of
dirt and blood, hiding her face. They could see that she had been
repeatedly raped; blood coated her thighs where it had recently
dried and welts could be plainly seen on her buttocks and back.

Around the edge of the camp was strung
fishing line with soda cans hanging in pairs spaced every few yards
as a makeshift perimeter alarm.

Steven pulled Kera back behind one of the
many large boulders that littered the valley floor.

“This is bad. We need to get the hell out of
here!” he whispered in her ear.

“Are you serious? We can’t leave those girls
there. That’s not right!” she hissed back, anger flashing in her
blue eyes like lightening.

“Look, I’m sorry. They’re not our problem. We
don’t need to be getting into a gun battle with those guys. I can’t
take the chance that you end up in there like that.” It tore at his
heart to leave the women to such an awful fate, and he knew it
would be one more thing that haunted his nights, yet he didn’t want
to chance either himself or Kera—or both of them— being killed or
wounded. He had already lost too much already.

“Me, Amanda, and Frank weren’t your problems
either. If you and Holly hadn’t intervened we would have been dead
or turned into Loonies. I won’t leave those girls here!”

Steven could see in her eyes that her
decision was final. He had learned over the past months that she
had a definite stubborn streak buried within that pliant, beautiful
body. Unfortunately, no matter how much they wanted to rescue those
women, it was a bad idea. The odds weren’t enough in their favor.
You didn’t survive nowadays by playing hero for strangers.

“Kera, we gotta go. Getting ourselves killed
isn’t going to help those women, or Jeremy.” He started backing up
away from the camp, however Kera just knelt there staring at him
with eyes like daggers. His shoulders slumped, a sigh escaped his
lips, and he crawled back close to her.

“What if that was me out there, or Jeremy?
Wouldn’t you want someone to rescue us if they had the chance?” she
asked in a forceful whisper.

“Yes, there may be a chance we can rescue
them without getting one or both of us killed. However I’m not
going to play those odds with your life!” he replied. He knew he
was losing the argument by the way she glared back at him.

“If we just leave them to those animals, then
there
is
no chance!” she hissed back, almost loud enough for
her voice to carry to the camp. She grabbed hold of his hand
tightly to emphasize her words, “Please, Steven, don’t leave them
there. There aren’t enough of us left in this world!”

He looked her steadily in the eyes and was
proud of her and ashamed of himself. He knew he was being selfish,
though in this crazy new world, selfish meant survival. He’d
learned that lesson with the loss of his wife and the disappearance
of his only child. If it had solely been him, he would probably
attempt it. However, he had Kera to care for now and it was his
responsibility to make sure she survived at the cost of all else.
It would be the same with Jeremy whenever they reunited with him.
He knew turning his back on those women would cost him a large
chunk of what remained of his soul, but damn it, they were called
hard choices for a reason!

He laid his carbine against the boulder and
took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Kera, but no, it’s not worth the
risk.”

She shrugged out of his grip, her face
reddening with fury. “I’m not leaving them here!” she hissed
again.

They heard a groan and a girl’s voice carried
clearly to them form the camp asking for water. They peeked around
the edge of the boulder and saw one of the men stand up and walk
over to the bound girl on the log. He bent down and grabbed a
handful of her hair, bending her head back painfully and said
something to her in a low, husky voice. He stood up and unzipped
his trousers, pulled free his penis, then proceeded to urinate over
the back of her head. His companion laughed. The man stuffed his
penis back in his pants and gave the woman a swift kick to the head
as he walked away, and they heard him warn her to ‘shut her pie
hole if she didn’t want worse’.

“We are
not
leaving them!” Kera
whispered with finality, her eyes blazing with fire.

Steven tried shaking his head ‘no’ again,
however before he could stop her, Kera sprang to her feet and
started running toward the camp, bringing the semi-auto shotgun to
her shoulder after she cleared the boulder.

“
Fuck
!” Steven cursed, propelling
himself after her, sweeping up his carbine and thumbing off the
safety while he ran to catch up.

They ran quietly and rapidly over the damp
fall leaves that littered the ground in an array of bright autumn
colors. Kera sprinted ahead of Steven, fury driving her at a
maddening pace, a growl like that of a Loony’s growing in her
throat. The man walking back from the prone woman was still
fighting the zipper on his trousers when he spotted the
small-framed dark-haired young girl burst through their parameter
wire. His mind didn’t even have time to register the shotgun in her
grip before there was a booming flash and a load of number one
buckshot tore off half of his skull. He was dead before the sound
of the blast reached his ears a fraction of a second later. The
other man turned toward the boom of the shotgun after watching his
companion’s head explode in a red mist of blood, bone, and tissue.
He abruptly dropped backwards off the log while drawing the
revolver from its quick draw holster, trying to put the pistol’s
sight on the enraged girl while she swiveled the shotgun toward
him. His first shot went wide as he fell backwards, and Kera heard
a ‘buzz’ when the bullet zipped by her ear by an inch. Steven, who
had almost caught up with her, opened up immediately with the Colt
M4 as soon as he had a clear shot past her. His first rounds tore
into the ground and the log around the man. Finally, he walked his
rounds up over the camouflaged panted legs of the burly, bearded
man and heard him scream in pain from the bullets that ripped
through his shins and buttocks. The man’s second shot went high and
the pistol dropped from his fingers.

Lying on his back and bleeding profusely from
around the legs, the man reached desperately for the dropped
revolver while the two strangers rushed up to him with their
firearms aimed at his head.

“Don’t do it!” Steven screamed at him,
stomping on the man’s arm as the man tried to grab for the gun. The
bearded man sneered, reached around with his other arm, and grabbed
at Steven with his large hand. Fingers as thick as sausages wrapped
around Steven’s calf and flipped him backwards with an ease and
strength that surprised him. He landed hard on his backpack,
knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending the AR flying from
his grip.

The man tried to pull himself up but Kera was
there, jamming the barrel of the shotgun nearly through the man’s
eye-socket and forcing him back down onto the ground.

“Give me one fucking reason!” she snarled at
him.

He glared up at her and saw the steely glint
of fury in her eyes and realized that she meant it. He visibly
relaxed and the pain and shock of his wounds began to overtake the
adrenaline. Even with the pain and blood loss, he grinned up at
Kera with yellowed, dirty teeth. “You would-a been a fun one.” He
then spat at her, his foul breath wafting up to her where she
stood, causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

“Shut the fuck up,” she replied coldly while
Steven rolled onto his knees and got hastily to his feet. He picked
up his carbine and covered the injured man with his barrel.

“I’ll take care of him,” he said. “Go help
the girls.”

Kera sneered savagely down at the man and
spat on him contemptuously. She spun angrily away and walked over
to the woman at the log. The man smeared the spittle onto his
tongue and smiled. “Ambrosia.”

Steven kicked the heavily built man hard in
one of the wounds on his leg, causing a grimace of pain to erase
his sick smile. He knelt down next to the man and laid his AR on
the ground behind him out of reach, then picked up the man’s Ruger
wheel-gun and checked its load. It still held four rounds. He
stuffed it in his belt and drew his own semi-automatic, rolling the
man over roughly with his other hand. The man must have outweighed
him by fifty pounds, most of it muscle. Blood still seeped from the
wounds in his buttocks and legs. By the looks of it, the bone in
his right shin had been shattered by a round, although by the
amount of blood it didn’t look like an artery had taken a hit.

Too
bad
, Steven thought to
himself.
The
fucker
can
sure
handle
pain
though
.
I’d
probably
be
blubbering
like
a
baby
.

“Okay, asshole, put your hands behind your
back,” Steven ordered.

The man laughed, yet did as he was told.
Steven reached down and undid a lace from one of the man’s grimy
boots and wrapped it around his thick wrists. He had to set his
handgun down next to him to finish binding the wrists together. He
didn’t see the tent flap twenty feet behind him part and the barrel
of a gun push out in his direction. The sound of the blast hit him
at the same time as the sledge hammer-like blow struck him in the
center of his back. He felt warm wetness spreading down his spine
and he collapsed forward over the injured man and fought to take a
breath, pushing back the pain and darkness that threatened to
overtake him.

Kera was beginning to cut the ropes that held
one of the prone woman’s wrists to a stake when the sound of the
gunshot blast caused her to dive flat onto her belly. Her hand
closed around the barrel of her shotgun and she pulled it in close
to her body while rolling over and up into a sitting position. She
wasn’t sure where the shot had come from. She nearly screamed out
in anguish when she spotted Steven lying motionless across the
bearded man, however, before she could react she heard the sound of
a shotgun being racked. The sound came from one of the tents across
the camp on the other side of Steven and she immediately spotted a
barrel sliding back out the tent flap. She swiftly and deftly fired
her shotgun from her hip in the direction of the tent and was
grateful to see the front of the tent shred from the load of large
pellets and the satisfactory sound of a grunt and a body hitting
the ground. She hastily stood and darted off to the side,
approaching the tent laterally, keeping her shotgun aimed at it as
she closed the distance. She picked up a long stick once she drew
near to pull aside the flap of the first tent, scanning the
interior with the gun. It was empty except for piles of raggedy
clothes and a couple of well-used sleeping bags. She let the tent
flap fall and silently approached its companion from which the shot
had come. She gingerly used the stick to pull aside the shredded
flap while she kept her finger tight on the gun’s trigger and let
its barrel poke inside.

The kid lay on his back with his shotgun
lying beside him. He must have been fourteen or fifteen years old
and had a scraggly, sparse attempt at a beard on his pimply face.
He stared up at the tent’s ceiling with round, bright, scared eyes
and Kera watched in amazement as a large bubble of blood built up
around his lips and then burst with a low pop to drain down his
dirty, hollow cheeks. Pink blood frothed and bubbled from a mess of
tangled flesh and glaringly-white bone around his sternum where the
tightly packed balls of lead had decimated his bare chest. She
entered the tent keeping the shotgun pointed at him. The light
quietly faded out of his eyes and his chest expanded with its last
attempt at a breath. A rattling gurgle sounded in his throat and
then he was quiet.

Kera backed out of the tent and into someone,
letting out a short scream when hands grabbed her around the
shoulders.

“Shhh! It’s alright, it’s me,” Steven said
from behind her. Stifling a sob, she spun around and wrapped her
free arm around his neck, burying her face into his chest.

“I thought you were dead!” she cried quietly.
“Are you hurt badly?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, hugging her back.
“Are you okay?”

“It was just a kid!” she cried. “He was just
a kid and I had to shoot him.” Her thoughts were in turmoil. She
could easily reconcile with herself the killing of the men, but a
kid! What kind of kid would be living with these monsters?

Steven pushed her back to arm’s length. “Look
at me,” he demanded when she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

She raised her tear-filled eyes to his.

“He was with them,” Steven said, nodding
toward the bound man. “He may look like a boy, however, he is just
as much of an animal as they are for what has been done to these
women. You did what you had to do. Don’t think for a second he
would have hesitated doing the same thing to you.”

She nodded in understanding and wiped the
tears away with the back of her hands. “I’m alright. I’ll be okay.
It just surprised me is all.”

“Please...” one of the women at the tree
pleaded hoarsely.

Kera stared over at her. “It’s alright.
You’re safe. We’ll get you down in a minute.” She turned back to
Steven. “First let’s check you out.” She spun him around to look at
his back. The outside of his pack was a mess of small holes in a
near circular pattern around six inches in diameter. She could see
the shredded remains of clothes and other items sticking out like
fluff from a busted pillow. She helped him lift off his pack and
saw that the back of his khaki shirt was soaked.