Killing The Dead 9 (Season 2 | Book 3): Family Matters Page 6

  His eyes met mine and I smiled in a way that I hoped he would understand indicated my thanks and he nodded as he breathed heavily.

  “Upstairs,” I said as I pointed at the door with the sign attached to the wall beside it to indicate a stairway.

  We pulled the door closed behind us as the first undead stumbled into the lobby and climbed the stairs as fast as we could to the second floor. Through a second door and into a long hallway with doors set on either side. A quick look at the stairwell door was enough to see we had no way of securing it.

  Many of the doors were open and books, clothes, and various other personal items lay scattered about the floor. The only light came from the windows set into each end of the hallway, but it was enough to illuminate the old stains on the walls. Signs of struggle and death.

  We walked slowly along the hall, weapons ready and in truth, we were both shattered. Our energy needed to be conserved as best it could be for when the zombies made their way up the stairs. It would take them a little while at least since they had no skill at opening doors and their stair climbing was poor at best.

  Still, they would make it up and then without a way out, we would fight and likely die. Even I could admit there were just too many for us to kill.

  By the time we’d reached the end of the hall, no zombies had leapt out of the rooms and those we had been able to look into were empty. It was fair to say that we were as safe as we could be until they reached the top of the stairs.

  “Well we’re fucked,” Gregg muttered as he leaned back against the wall and looked out the window at the zombies as they made their way towards the halls of residence in truly staggering numbers.

  “More of them than I thought,” I admitted and he grunted.

  We leant against the wall in companionable silence for a minute or two as we listened to the banging on the door below us. I looked at Gregg and even with my limited ability to recognise emotion, I could see that he was upset. I think.

  In truth though, I was quite cheerful. I’d survived longer than I’d expected, I’d got to kill quite a number of zombies and my friend hadn’t abandoned me. It would be nice to have some company when I died if nothing else.

  “Thank you,” I said to him. He looked at me blankly for a moment and then nodded.

  “No worries mate,” he said. “Couldn’t leave you to take all the glory yourself.”

  “Glory?”

  “You know,” he said with a laugh. “Kill the bad guys, get the medicine and save the girl.”

  His laughter was infectious and I allowed a small smile as Jinx watched us both with a quizzical look to her eyes, perhaps curious about the reasons for the mirth.

  My smile faded as I looked outside and saw that the crowd was growing and not thinning. I very much doubted that we would be saving ourselves, let alone Lily.

  Chapter 9 - Lily

  It was dark when I opened my eyes. Not the darkness that comes with being in a small room with a blanket over the window, which I was, but that darkness that I’d only really experienced since the end of the world. A darkness that came when night had fallen and no man made light existed in the world.

  Heat radiated from the wound in my stomach and my mouth was dry, my body seemingly having sweated out all of the moisture in it, I needed something to replace it.

  My thoughts were not quite as coherent as usual and I put that down to the combination of fever and incredible pain that went through me whenever I tried to move. Since I was alone in the office, in the dark, at least as far as I could tell, it was up to me to get something to drink.

  A groan escaped me as I pushed aside the covers, the air cool on my bare skin, and heaved myself up to a sitting position with arms that trembled. I sat for a moment and drank in several deep breaths of air as what little strength I had seemed to leave me.

  I felt around the floor beside the low cot and after several fumbling seconds I bumped against something. Plastic, about the right shape for a cup and… yep definitely has something wet in it, I smiled ruefully as I wiped my hand against the blankets and picked up the cup.

  Go slow, I reminded myself as I sipped at the water. It wasn’t particularly cold and tasted a little funky but it was the only drink I had. I finished it slowly and let the cup back down to the floor. I had no idea where everyone was, though considering the darkness I could only imagine that they were sleeping.

  Still, I felt a pressing need to find somewhere to relieve the pressure on my bladder that was at least a small part of the discomfort and pain I was feeling.

  With nothing to grip, I pressed one hand against the wall to steady myself as I slowly raised myself to my feet. A hiss of breath escaped and the trembling in my arms was as nothing compared to my legs but I held steady.

  Pleased with myself for making it that far, I set off towards the door and had taken barely two steps before my legs gave way and I collapsed to the floor, darkness closing in around me.

  ****

  “That was very foolish,” a stern voice said as I was lifted bodily and deposited on the cot. A groan escaped me and the woman clucked her tongue. “Well, that serves you right. You would try and get out of bed.”

  “Evelyn?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Now get yourself back under the covers.”

  “I needed to pee.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you all cleaned up,” my lover's sister said after a moment's hesitation and my humiliation was complete.

  “Sorry.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first patient I’ve cleaned up,” she said and I could hear the humour in her voice. It helped. A little.

  “Thank you,” I said and meant it. “Throat hurts.”

  “Drink this,” she said as refilled the cup from a jug and pressed it to my lips. It was only then that I realised I could see the jug she held and the faint outline of her body as the darkness receded.

  “It’s morning already?”

  “Yes,” she said but again, there was a slight hesitation before she said it.

  “How long have I been asleep?” A horrible suspicion was slowly forming in my mind and I suspected I knew the answer.

  “It’s been over a day,” Evelyn said and I saw her turn her face away.

  “Ryan? Is he back then?” My stomach seemed to be doing cartwheels and a part of my mind was gibbering in fear at the answer I knew was coming. If he was back, he’d be here. Where is he?

  “No.”

  “Something must have gone wrong,” I said as a new fear gripped me. “He wouldn’t have been gone so long otherwise.”

  Evelyn stood and crossed the room to pick up a basin of water and a clean cloth. She returned a moment later and set it down beside the cot and dipped the cloth into it. She wrung it out and set about cleaning me as though I were a baby, incapable and helpless. Though at that moment, that’s exactly how I felt.

  “Gabe returned,” she said finally and I didn’t try to stop the tears that formed. “He said… well, it doesn’t matter. They didn’t even make it to the hospital.”

  My body shook as the tears fell and her arms went around me as she held me, silent but for the calming noises she made as I wept for the man I loved and one of the few true friends I had found since the fall of the world.

  “Cass?” I managed to ask between great wracking sobs that did nothing to help ease the pain from my gut.

  “Her boyfriend is with her,” Evelyn said. “Shh now, stop your tears. You’re still very sick and need to save your strength to recover.”

  She didn’t need to add that the chances of that were severely lowered without the medicines Ryan had given his life trying to bring me. Not that it would even matter now. How could I face Cass knowing that her brother had died trying to get help for me.

  “How?” I asked. The darkness was closing in around me and I very much wanted to know before it caught me in its embrace and dragged me back down to what could possibly be an eternal slumber. “Please… tell me.”

  “Gabe.
He said, well, he said that they were too many of the undead. Their only hope was to turn back but Ryan, he refused. He was always a stubborn child and I guess that didn’t change.” She paused and wiped at her own eyes and I was reminded that she had lost a brother she had only just found out had survived the apocalypse just a few days before.

  “Ryan tried to get through but he was surrounded by them. Your friend Gregg, he ran off to help. The last Gabe saw of them, hundreds of zombies were around them, all reaching for them.”

  Hope surged. I knew it shouldn’t, it was beyond foolish but it was there. A bright spark of hope that helped hold back the darkness. “He didn’t see them die?”

  “Gabe couldn’t bear that. He didn’t see them fall but he was sure of the numbers against them, the chance of them surviving are tiny. They were lost to sight beneath a crowd of hundreds of undead.”

  “You don’t know them,” I said as my eyes closed. “They didn’t die, not like that.”

  I didn’t hear her reply as the darkness took me but as I sank deeper into it I knew that I would wake at least once more. I had to know for sure they had survived.

  Chapter 10 - Ryan

  My knife came free of the corpse with a sucking sound like that of mud as you pulled your booted foot free. Not the most pleasant sound even to me, but one I had heard often throughout the day.

  Jinx gave a silent snarl as tore at the back of a downed zombie’s neck, her teeth tearing through the flesh to chew on the spinal cord. I wasn’t entirely sure she would be able to chew right through it in any efficient time frame but I admired her determination.

  Another zombie made its way up the last few steps and I kicked it in the chest, sending it falling back against the others. Gregg pulled on my arm and I sighed as I looked back at him.

  “Help me with this one,” he said as he hauled up a corpse, his hands under its armpits.

  I grabbed the dead body’s legs and together we lifted it over the railings before letting it drop onto the other undead that were trying to climb the stairs.

  He wiped his forehead with one arm, leaving a streak of bloody grime. Hardly worth mentioning since the both of us were covered quite liberally in blood and other fluids I didn’t want to think too much about.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” he said and I shrugged. “We must have killed hundreds of the bloody things and there’s no end of them in sight.”

  “Sixty-three,” I said as I watched another making its way around the bend in the stairs. It stumbled over the bodies that already littered the steps and I knew it would take a few more minutes to make its way up to us.

  “What? You’re counting them?”

  “Aren’t you?” I asked as I turned to him. He shook his head, eyes wide with… something I couldn’t identify. I need to start learning to read people's expressions, I thought since it seemed ever more likely Lily wouldn’t be there to help me with that kind of stuff.

  “No mate,” he said. “Who the fuck has time to count how many we kill while trying to stay alive.”

  “Keeps the mind occupied.”

  “It should be occupied with staying alive!”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t up to me to tell him what he should be doing during a fight for his life, but being focused on staying alive was severely limiting. I mean sure, staying alive was useful and often necessary to allow you to continue the real fun, like the actual killing itself. It wasn’t the end goal though.

  Well perhaps not for me, I thought as I looked over at my friend. He was staring aghast at Jinx who seemed to be crunching on the zombie's spine as it thrashed weakly beneath her.

  “Does it bother you?” I asked and he looked from the dog to me.

  “Does what bother me?”

  “Dying.”

  “What?” he raised one eyebrow and tilted his head as though unsure what he was hearing.

  “Does the idea of dying upset you?”

  “Of course it upsets me!” he snapped. “Are you saying it doesn’t upset you?”

  “Not really,” I said with another shrug. The zombie was almost half way up the stairway and another was rounding the bend behind it. I glanced over the railing to the other half of the stairway to see plenty more making their way over the impromptu barricade of corpses we had thrown down there.

  “Then why the hell are we here?” he asked.

  “We were getting medicine for Lily.”

  “Yeah I know that, but if dying doesn’t bother you then why does it matter? Why did you even bother surviving those first days of the Fall?”

  “I said it didn’t bother me, but that doesn’t mean I am going to die easily,” I said in the quiet tone I used when dealing with someone who clearly didn’t grasp a rather simple concept. “As for Lily, I know she wants to live and so I will do what I can to help her do that.”

  “There’s something wrong with you,” Gregg said with a shake of his head. “Seriously mate, something really wrong with you.”

  I flashed him a grin and he swore softly to himself before lifting his bat from where he’d left it beside the wall and swinging it overhead to crash down on the zombie's skull as it reached the top of the stairwell. It fell without a sound, to tumble backwards down the stairs.

  He shook the bat to rid it of the worst of the blood and brain matter and grimaced at Jinx. “Is she going to keep doing that?”

  “How would I know?” I replied as I looked at the dog. She seemed to be making some progress on the spinal column and her claws had raked deep furrows in the rotted flesh of its back.

  “That can’t be good for her,” he insisted. “It’s zombie flesh for god's sake.”

  “She’ll be fine, I don’t think animals turn from the infection.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “But we would have seen them,” I pointed out before adding, “Though they are generally smaller than a human so there might not have been enough left to reanimate after the zombies had finished with them.”

  I studied the dark furred hound for a moment and scratched idly at my chin as I thought. “Perhaps she’ll turn. Will be interesting to see if she does.”

  “No way mate, that’s too cruel,” he said as he stepped towards her. I held up one hand and waved him back.

  “Oh don’t worry,” I said. “The pigs ate loads of tainted meat and never turned and they would be more likely than a dog would.”

  He stopped and looked back. “Why would pigs be more likely?”

  “Similarities to humans,” I said. “There’s a reason they were researching transplants from pigs to humans back when the world was whole. You know hearts and the like.”

  “Maybe,” he said and grunted. “Not sure I’d want a pig heart though.”

  “There’s another one,” I said with a nod towards the stairs and he swung the bat against its head without blinking. It staggered a moment and then fell forward to land part way on the landing.

  We didn’t even need to discuss it, Gregg grabbed one end of the body and I went to pick up the other and together we dumped it unceremoniously over the side of the railings to land with a thud on the others below.

  “This isn’t accomplishing anything,” he said. “It’s already getting dark outside and we can’t stay here all night.”

  “Of course not, we have to get to the hospital,” I agreed. “The question is how.”

  He turned to me and even in the dim light of the halls of residence, I could see his eyes widen and mouth drop open. “You’re joking?”

  “No, why?”

  “We couldn’t make it past the university, you think it will be any easier at the hospital? We need to head back and find some other way.”

  “No,” I said. There was nothing else to say, no arguments that would sway me. I’d wasted enough time and she lay dying while I failed at the task I had set out to do.

  As Gregg shook his head and muttered something beneath his breath, a final sharp crack sounded and the zombie beneath Jinx stopped it thrashing. She looked
up at me with big dark eyes and licked at the blood and gore that covered her maw. “Well done,” I told her.

  The dog seemed pleased with my attention or at least I assumed it was pleased. For all I knew it could be annoyed. I had enough trouble discerning the emotions and facial expressions of humans, I doubted I’d be any better with a canine.

  Still, she had proven herself useful. A great deal more useful than my brother at least. I wondered idly if I should kill him when I made it back to the sanctuary. He had abandoned us and made my task of saving Lily that much more difficult. That deserved some form of punishment at least.

  “So what now?” Gregg asked as he looked back at me from where he leant against the railings. He’d been watching the zombies clamber over one another in their frenzied attempts to reach us.

  That same frenzy was what had ultimately saved us from having all of them climbing the stairs at the same time. Unlike living enemies who would go up the stairs one after another, the zombies pushed and shoved, even clawed their brethren in an attempt to reach us, such was their hunger.

  The result of that could be seen at the bottom of the stairwell where a bottleneck had been created, allowing just the occasional lucky few through the door to climb the steps and die at our hands.

  “Stay here and watch them, I’ll check out the rooms,” I said. “If too many start making their way up, call out and I’ll come back.”

  “Yeah sure thing, just leave me with all the undead,” Gregg muttered as I flashed a grin at him. I turned to the door to the second-floor rooms and paused. I glanced back at the dog who was watching me intently and I sighed.

  “Fine, you can come too.”

  Jinx fairly scampered over to my side as Gregg said something too low for me to hear and laughed. It was no doubt something he thought was funny but would be totally incomprehensible to me. I ignored it and set off to check the rooms.