Zombies and Chainsaws (Book 2): Dark Roads (17 page)

It was nearly pitch black. She grabbed some of the kindling they had collected earlier and placed it in the fire. The fading embers were hungry for food, and she fed them until the flames grew. She checked the tent, unzipping it and making sure Patrick was still inside and still sound asleep. She found exactly what she wanted to: Patrick was curled up on the floor of the tent.

Branches cracked in the distance, and when she turned around she realized looking into the woods was even more difficult with the full fire going. Shadows danced in the woods, and she shook Patrick, quickly waking him. She got the guns into the bag, keeping out the shotgun, ready to take care of anything that came her way. Patrick said, “What is it—why did you wake me?”

Maria hushed him, kneeling down and trying her best to keep her eyes focused on the dark woods. When the dead came out of the shadows, she fired, each blast lighting up the forest. She saw that the five shells she'd loaded weren't nearly enough to cover the number of dead coming for them.

Patrick saw it, too, and could tell his aunt was getting nervous. “You want me to grab a rifle, Aunt Maria?”

She shook her head no; she knew he’d never fired a rifle at night. It seemed unwise to let someone who didn't know what he was doing send shots out into the black of night. She picked him up off the ground, and the two of them made their way through the woods as quickly as they could, leaving the supplies behind them. She would rather worry about their next meal than end up becoming one themselves.

When they had gotten away from the dead, there was no sound, and that was a blessing to the two of them. She stopped, looking around and trying to think which direction they needed to go. The forest looked so different at night that she had become lost. She heard more twigs snapping and decided against going any further. She pushed Patrick up into a tree and, after handing him the bag, she climbed up herself. The two of them climbed as high as they could. When they reached a safe height, she took off the strap from the duffle bag and secured the two of them around the waist so they could sleep without falling.

Patrick said, “You know, this might be the most fun we’ve ever had together, Aunt Maria.”

“Fun? You think that this is fun, Patrick?”

“Well, we got to go on the roof, we did fireworks, we drove a car through the woods into the river, jumped in the river, and now we get to sleep in a tree.”

“Well, there’s a good chance when your daddy gets back that we're going to sleep out in the woods for quite awhile. I have a feeling, though, we won’t be sleeping in trees.”

Patrick said, “Well, with the way those things trashed his tent, we won’t be sleeping in there.”

“Well, we had to choose between letting those things eat us or running for it and letting your dad get a new tent. We'll be able to pick up a new one, or maybe—even better—we can get a camper instead. Wouldn’t you like a big camper or RV?”

Patrick nodded, thinking of a bed on wheels. Within half an hour of sitting in the tree, Maria wished she had thought of somewhere better to hide. When she ran the flashlight back and forth across the forest floor, she instantly regretted it. The dead stared back at her, their eyes dark, distant, and hollow. When she turned off the light, the growling began, the breaking limbs and the clawing at the tree trunk not more than five feet below.

She kissed Patrick on the head, unsure what the two of them could do, if anything. Then she saw floodlights coming through the trees. She started firing Hail Mary shots up into the sky, praying someone would come to her rescue. She fired three times in a row and then stopped. The dead who had been trying to get up the tree became insane with rage and hunger. The noise in the black of night only confirmed that there were meals in the tree above them. She waited, praying to all that was holy they would be saved, mostly for Patrick’s sake. The thought of him lost in this current Hell on Earth was more than she could bear.

Patrick was holding on tightly to her and flinching with each blast of the shotgun. She said, “It's going to be okay, honey, just hold on. Whoever that is will hear us. They're going to get help and get us out of this tree, I promise, baby, I do.”

“I’m not a baby, Aunt Maria!”

“No, no, you aren't. You're a big, brave boy, just like your daddy. Now, I want you to hold on and plug your ears the best that you can. I’m going to fire off another round of shells." To herself, she thought,
I hope they can find us, because I don’t have very many of these shells left.

Patrick nodded, wiping his nose on her shirt. “You got it, Aunt Maria, I got my ears plugged up real good. Next time, you need to bring me some earplugs
—
Dad always says to use them when we shoot.”

Maria patted him on the head. She added a shell and fired off three more as quickly as she could. She did not want the only possible chance she had to save the boy wasted by being stingy with her shots. When she took the final shot, the vehicle stopped, then came through the forest until it found the dead.

Chapter 13

Jude took it slow driving back into town. The trip across the state had definitely not been an easy one. They took the highway, and had tried to help as many people as they could on their travels, and shared the recipe with those who had not seen the announcement. At dusk, they ended up on Jude’s street. The number of dead roaming the area concerned him. He thought of nothing but Patrick and Maria, and when they pulled over near his house, he saw a horde around his house and the neighbors'.

Chuck said, “Oh, shit, Jude, you think they're still in there? Where's Maria’s car at?”

“I don’t fucking know, Chuck, maybe she moved it into the garage
—
maybe they left? I won’t really have an answer to that until we actually find her, will I? We have to go and check out the house.”

“You notice we got a lot of those dead just sitting there, right? How are we going to get them away from the house?”

“By doing something stupid.” Jude hit the horn, tapping it until he had all of their attention.

When the dead started walking their way, Chuck said, “So what the hell are you going to do now?”

Jude said, “I’m going to blind me some zombies and then chop their damn heads off. If anything's happened to my family, I won’t stop killing these fuckers until every last one of them has been put down or they put me down. But I assure you, they won't have an easy time of it.”

“Don’t go writing your family off yet, Jude. If you haven’t noticed, Maria's one tough woman, taking care of you all this time. You kind of attract them, if you know what I mean.”

Jude laughed. “I didn’t attract anyone—my wife died, and she came to care for Patrick. It was pretty simple.”

Jude opened the door, holding the hose in one hand. The army rifles were slung around his back for good measure. He sprayed the hose until every one of the dead within two hundred yards had been doused with the liquid. He loved the simplicity of it, and only wished they had forty of these set-ups ready to go. Jude could only imagine the power they would have—they would be able to drop the dead in droves.

When they started to lose their path and walk into one another, Jude gripped the machine gun and took out their knees as best he could. The dead fell, one after another, until they lay crippled in the street and the yard.

One of the neighbors, Laura McQuaig, stuck her head out the window. She screamed over the gunfire, “Jude, Jude, is that you? What the hell are you doing? You know what these things will do to you if given the chance? Christ, they chased off everyone else.”

“Did you see my family? Did you see Patrick and Maria?”

“Yeah, they're bat-shit crazy. They shot off fireworks from your roof down the street. It actually got rid of the dead for awhile, but, you know, not more than an hour later, those sons of bitches came right back up the street.”

Excitement fluttered in Jude's chest. “Wait, so that means they're alive?”

“No, no, it doesn’t mean that. It means they left here and they ain't here any longer. They headed down the street back toward town. The neighbors there jumped in with them, and the four of them left like a bat out of hell. She had the engine screaming as they drove down the road.”

Jude winced at the thought of Maria trying to drive like hell with zombies everywhere. He pointed the direction they'd gone, and Laura nodded.

The neighbors came out, one by one, when they saw the group in the street, wanting to know what was going on. No one had came through to save anyone until now. None of Jude's neighbors had seen the military broadcast; they had been in the basements of their homes, bunkering down.

Joann read off the blinding concoction's ingredients, and people hurriedly wrote down the things they needed.

Within an hour, Jude had an entire city block armed with the liquid. The citizens were carrying whatever weapons they could muster. Chuck drove slowly so the townspeople could keep up. Charlie walked alongside the Humvee with his chainsaw ready to go. Jude sat with a rifle at the ready, and Leslie was seated behind their makeshift zombie water cannon. Joann wrote down the formula as quickly as she could to hand out to as many people as possible as they went along. She had to stop for a minute when she looked in the rearview mirror at the mass following they had gained in only a few short blocks. The people were scared, but they were brave, as well—ready to take back their city from the dead. There were people carrying axes, meat tenderizers, baseball bats, and some things Joann didn't even recognize or know the proper name for.

Chuck looked over at her and said, “You know, I kind of wish this thing had a radio. We need some theme music, because this whole thing here right now—yeah, it is bad-ass. We are going to take those things down, and there isn’t shit they can do about it.”

“You realize you shouldn’t say things like that, right?” Joann said.

“Please, would you look at the army we have? We’ll probably have all these things dead in, like, an hour or two.”

“You are basing that off of what, Chuck?”

“Are you trying to offend me?”

Joann just sat staring with her arms crossed.

Chuck said, “Okay, apparently you
are
trying to. I've been thinking about this for, like, ten minutes. There’s more people with every block. As long as nothing bad happens, we're gonna be just fine.”

Joann did the sign of the cross in her head, trying to stay cool and calm. “Honestly, Chuck, I couldn’t be happier than if you were right. I just want things to go back to normal—I don’t think that's asking too much, is it?”

Chuck shook his head, looking at Jude manning the rifle on the trailer. “So when this is all over, do you think you and Leslie are going back home, or are you thinking you might stick around here?”

Joann smiled, knowing he was thinking of himself for sure, but of Jude and her as well. “Well, I work for the CDC. I can pretty much get a job anywhere, Chuck. But I’d say it’d depend a lot on Jude. We met under pretty stressful circumstances. I’d hate to think that was the reason we clicked so quickly. I’d like to see where things will go.”

“Are you shitting me? That man hasn’t touched a woman since his wife passed, and let me tell you, sweetheart, there’s been no lack of women trying. That man deserves a medal for turning down all the women offering him more poontang than he can handle."

“Wow, Chuck, really, I’m speechless. It's good to know he hasn’t been whoring it up. Nothing like dating an easy guy.”

“Well, Jude’s your man, then.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes; the lights on the truck and the few streetlights still working were the only thing illuminating the dark streets. Joann found a floodlight and ran it across the streets, making sure that nothing was going to ambush them. When they reached the woods, she could see the dead walking in among the trees, and a red tent that had been trampled. She gripped Chuck’s shoulder, pointing, and they heard shotgun blasts coming from the tree line. She didn’t need to say anything to the others, because Jude had a canister of the liquid with him and was already making his way through the tree line.

The citizen army made their way through the woods quickly, taking out the dead which stumbled without direction around the trees. When the shotgun blasts stopped, the screaming for help began. Jude ran through the woods, leaving the group behind.

He heard a voice and recognized it immediately. Jude screamed out, “Maria! Maria, Patrick, where are you? Where are you? It’s me!”

Maria never quit screaming until Jude found them in the tree. Seeing him, she rested her head against the trunk. She had never been happier in her life to see Jude. The dead clawing at the base of the tree were quickly dealt with. Maria tried not to shut her eyes as she watched Jude take the chainsaw across the tops of their heads from behind.

Patrick yelled, “That is disgusting
—
that's great! Do it again, Dad, do it again!”

Jude looked around, making sure the dead were no longer an immediate threat. He killed the saw, dropping it on the ground, and barely had time to raise his hands before Patrick leapt from the tree and into his father’s waiting arms. Maria screamed when he jumped, but knew just as well that there was no chance of him ever touching the ground if his father was near.