Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (71 page)

As the sun began to set, they made camp in the hangar. I wasn’t really paying attention any more. As long as they stayed inside that hangar, I could simply wait it out until it was co
mpletely dark, and then slip away. I must have been napping, because I was jolted to full alert at the sound of a scream. I was certain that somebody had been set on by a zombie.

I tried to move into a position to get a better look. I could still see a low fire burning in the hangar between the two jets. What I couldn’t see were any of the men; or any signs of zo
mbies. It went on for at least a minute. And let me tell you, when somebody is screaming in obvious pain, that is an eternity.

There was no way that I was going to snoop around in the dark for the source of those screams. Also, that meant I wasn’t lea
ving. Something was going on in the darkness, and I had a nice, safe, defensible spot. I’d just wait till morning.

As the sun rose, bringing what I am positive was the ho
ttest day I had endured in my life, it actually took me a couple of minutes to make sense of what I was seeing. Four of the five men were in the hangar huddled together. When one of them got up to do something, I spotted something large on a spit over the fire. It took a minute for it to dawn on me that it was a human torso. Things clicked. At least somewhat.

I considered making a break for it, but being in the middle of nowhere, it would take me over an hour just to get out of sight. I would be exposed for way too long. The only choice I had was to stay put. The
worst part was the fact that the smell of roasting meat was making my mouth water. Try as I might to remind myself what I was smelling, I could not overcome the growling in my stomach or the saliva building up and occasionally dripping down my chin when I wasn’t swallowing enough. I think, at first, I wouldn’t swallow because I was protesting my bodily reaction to the smells versus the knowledge of where those smells originated.

Finally, late in the afternoon, they started gathering up their stuff and moving along. I waited for what felt like forever, but really couldn’t have been more than an hour after they were gone b
efore I came down. I couldn’t help it, I had to go see. Finding the killing spot was easy. It was a big, dark stain in the sand. There were bones tossed about, and on a stick was the head. The boy couldn’t have been any older than sixteen.

My guess goes something like this. They encountered this kid, maybe when they ran across another group. They probably e
nticed him away with stories of all the lawless fun to be had. I’m betting that this wasn’t the first time that these guys had done this. It seemed too cleanly executed.

I waited until it was light enough for me to see a few feet in front of myself the next morning, and got moving. Of course I topped off on everything and stuffed a few
days’ worth of the MREs in my satchel.

I was cutting across an airstrip when I heard a commotion from a squat building that sat at the end of a narrow path. It was right against the fence. I couldn’t help myself; I had to go check it out. I was surprised to say the least at what I had discovered. The best I can figure is that maybe it’s like prison. Some men go in and need sex so badly that they make do with whatever is avai
lable. Men who don’t have a gay bone in their body, but just couldn’t do without sex.

It was the same four from the boy-barbecue. I watched through a dirty window as they fought each other. It was def
initely every man for himself. When the dust settled, two men were unconscious and two men were unbuckling their pants. I tried to wrap my mind around the whole concept.

“Sorry you lost the fight today, Pete. You know the rules. I will be butt-raping you now.”

“It’s cool, bro. I’ll get you next time.”

What I did next wasn’t out of any sense of helping the two u
nconscious men. It had solely to do with the fact that these men were animals. They had succumbed to their most base level. They were barely a step above the slime that we supposedly evolved from.

Fortunately, these guys weren’t worried about much. The door was shut, but a window that gave me a clear shot was open. I fired my crossbow catching one of the still conscious ones right between the shoulder blades. Have you ever noticed how close the sounds of sex and pain are?  That is why I got off my second shot catching the other in about the same place. Two down and two to go. I figured I could go in and retrieve my pr
ecious bolts, then finish off the other pair with my blade or spear. I got two steps inside the door when the body underneath the first one I killed shoved the corpse off of him, rolled over, and came up with a blade that would make Crocodile Dundee jealous.

It never once occurred to me that one of the unconscious men might be playing possum. And trust me, as alert as he was, that was the only explanation. That brings a whole new series of thoughts and questions to mind, but all I had time to do was to turn and run. I don’t know if you have ever tried to reload a crossbow on the run…I couldn’t.

What I did do was duck inside a three-story building. I got up the stairs and kicked open the door at the top. It was probably all the noise I was making, but I wasn’t prepared for the pair of zombies waiting on the other side of the door. I jumped back from the two sets of arms that came at me. That’s when I dropped my crossbow. I felt a little sick when parts and pieces of it flew off as it bounced down the stairs.

I grabbed the first hand I could and did a yank-and-sling move that send it careening and tumbling down the concrete steps. I brought my knife up and drove it through the underside of the jaw of the remaining zombie, and then hip-tossed it downs the stairs as well.

I heard my pursuer burst in down below and looked for a place to hide. The sounds of a scuffle let me know that he went heads-up with the zombie I had thrown down the stairs. It sounded like they clashed on the second floor landing. By the time I heard booted footsteps coming up, I’d wedged myself in an alcove between two tall filing cabinets. My plan was simple. If he came in and looked for me, I was down low with my knife ready. I would thrust out and up.

Sure enough, the door slammed open and I could hear his heavy breathing. He called out, hoping that I would be some frightened girl who couldn’t deal with the fear of being stalked. I heard him toss a few chairs out of the way, thinking that maybe I’d hidden under some desk. When he stopped in front of me…the idiot a
ctually had his back to me. I must have hit a kidney, because when my knife plunged in, he barely made a sound. More like a hissing whimper. I scooped up the big-ass knife that he’d been carrying and drove it into his chest. The worst part was the fact that I did not feel one single thing while I looked into his eyes as the light dimmed, and then went out.

I wiped my knife off and headed for the stairs. My cros
sbow was in pieces.
That
was a bummer. I stepped outside and that’s when I saw the other guy. We just looked at each other for a moment. Then…he leered, waved, and started heading my direction.

He was a big man and I didn’t have any doubts as to who would win in a fight. Wait! Let me correct that. I didn’t have any doubts about who would win in a
fair
fight. The first thing I did was run back into the cluster of main buildings. At the very first corner I reached, I took it so that I was temporarily out of sight. There were eight buildings to choose from.

The rest of the day was a glorified hide-and-seek game. In the movies, chases are so dramatic and rarely last beyond a few minutes. By nightfall, I’d been in at least a dozen different pla
ces, and hidden in every one of the buildings in this little cluster at least once at some point. At first, I considered trying to rig a trap. Those take much longer than a person realizes. I was really missing my crossbow. By late afternoon, I came up with an idea. He had set fire to the first building. All day I’d had to listen to this man’s dialogue. He took great pleasure telling me about all the things he was going to do when he caught me.

When he ducked into a second building to light it on fire—by the way, I did kick myself for not realizing that he was pr
eparing for this activity all day while we were playing our life or death version of hide-and-seek—I bolted for the structure that housed the bombs. I knew that, as far away as it was across open ground, he would see me. I had one canister of gas or kerosene; whatever it was that he had found as an igniting source for his fires, which were now burning in three buildings. There were a lot of wooden crates in addition to the metal ones in that storage facility. I didn’t have any idea what was in those wooden crates.

I had enough of a lead that I could douse a few crates close to the rows of bombs. It really was a wing and a prayer. It didn’t have the initial effect that I had hoped for. I tossed a rag that I lit after soaking it in the gas or whatever and then ran. There was a very small reaction as something cooked off and blew up…sorta. (Curse you Hollywood for filling our heads with so many ideas involving giant explosions.) It did do enough to have the man turn around and run the other direction…for a m
inute or two.

I managed to duck into another bunch of buildings and escape. For a couple of days, I hid in an air duct while my pursuer searched in vain. Then, the zombies started showing up. Some even wandered right into the building that I was hiding in.

Eventually, things settled down. I didn’t hear anything living or undead. When I climbed down, I was surprised that things didn’t look worse. The biggest bummer of a discovery was that the guy had torched the building with the water and MREs. I only had about a half of a canteen of water left.

I was walking northish, heading back to the highway. That was the only way I figured to get past the mountains to the east. That was when I stumbled, almost literally, on the cemetery. When I saw the pair of legs sticking out from behind a cracked and worn monument, I brought my spear up. His eyes opened just as I raised my arms to plunge the spiked-tipped spear into him. His head moved just enough to cause me to miss.

He swept my feet out from under me and I barely had enough of a chance to get my knife clear. His fist smashed into the side of my head, and just like that, the fight was over.

When I came to, I knew he had done a number of unpleasant things to me when I was unconscious. All of my stuff was thrown everywhere, including my satchel. My hands were bound and secured above my head to a headstone. My feet were lik
ewise tied with the legs spread uncomfortably wide and attached to stakes driven into the ground. The other handicap was being on my stomach. I couldn’t see a thing. Worse, I couldn’t hear a thing but the occasional sound of the wind which carried the smell of the still-burning buildings a couple of miles away at the military base.

I lay still for what seemed like forever. I kept waiting for the degradation or death. When darkness fell, and still nothing, I figured he must have gone to the base to scavenge. Naturally, I began going to work on the bindings. I was sore, very thirsty, hungry, and scared. Combine that with the poor job of tying me up and eventually I got loose.

It was fully dark by now and I was crawling around trying to find my stuff when I found the body. I
probably
screamed. I definitely moved away and felt for anything that I could use as a weapon. Nothing happened. Even with the distant glow from the fires, I could not see. I didn’t move for a while, waiting for an attack. I must have dozed off after the adrenaline backed down a notch. And here I am. I’ve dressed and grabbed what few things I still have.

My best guess is that I managed to stick the bastard just as—or just before—he punched me in the temple. The idiot was so o
bsessed with raping me that he bled out. Seriously, men can be such dumbasses.

There is too much activity to the west for me to risk the base. Besides, I already know that the best stuff is already gone. Ser
iously, I hope to God that I can find a water source by this evening. I won’t move until it gets cooler. My body is already hot, but I am not sweating. If I am…it’s evaporating before it can be noticed.

Thursday, August 26

I didn’t realize how bad off I was. Apparently I passed out in the cemetery. I am inside what I am pretty sure was a bar. Two ladies, a pretty teen girl, and an old man saved my butt. They brought me to this place—wherever the heck it is—and have been pumping me full of water, rabbit stew, and some mashed vegetables that I can’t identify.

The thing is…they’re all deaf and dumb. I don’t speak sign la
nguage and only one of them knows how to read and write…the young girl. She’s kinda skittish. I imagine that the still angry-looking scars that make up most of the left side of her face—including the dark hole where her eyeball used to be—is a big part of that reason.

I tried to helpful after I recovered. I even went out ye
sterday and set some snares for rabbits, just like Eric showed me.  I brought five in and after the one I ate, I wrote a thank you note that I will leave where the girl is sure to find it. Best I can tell, all I have to do is to head south following the road out of town. I’m pretty sure that I will eventually find a sign that will tell me where I am and eventually, how far it is to Vegas.

Saturday, August 28