Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Jesse ran, and he kept on running.
One foot in front of the aching other through knee-deep then waist-deep snow. Maybe he ran for minutes or hours. Felt like days either way. But Wyatt told him to run, so that’s what Jesse did, as mindless as the horde they were trying so desperately to escape.
He didn’t even know where they were headed, but Wyatt did, his hand still wrapped tight around Jesse’s arm, lifting and hauling and dragging, speeding Jesse up, keeping them ahead of the zombie tide.
But fuck, only just — and then, not enough.
The fastest of the zombies, the freshest, they’d been gaining on them for miles now, and those zombies were almost up on their heels when Jesse and Wyatt burst out into a vaguely familiar clearing.
No trees on the opposite side, though. Just a high, rocky outcrop, a steep bluff with a free-fall of cliffs that plunged down to the dark tops of the trees way too far below.
Jesse pivoted left, ready to make for the the relative safety of the tree line, but Wyatt tightened his grip and dragged Jesse toward the bluff instead.
Jesse let himself be dragged, because of course he did, but that didn’t stop him trying to run his mouth.
“This isn’t— We can’t— Wyatt, we have to—”
Didn’t work, that feeble protest. The words wouldn’t come. Not complete, anyhow. And nothing coherent, because Jesse was short of any kind of breath. He could taste copper, deep down. The charley horse galloping up his calf was a Derby winner, a sure fucking thing.
“Move, Jess,” Wyatt ordered.
And Jesse tried, he did, but there was nothing left except the terror. His lungs were tight with it, his joints locked. He couldn’t do anything but shake his head, the motion of it more like a tremor than a denial.
Wyatt’s hand flexed tight on Jesse’s arm. “Okay, bud,” he said. “It’s okay.”
He slung Jesse over his shoulder, a rerun of their fireman carry, made even more awkward by both their packs.
But Wyatt didn’t stumble. Barely slowed down.
Reached for the bluff and hauled them up the craggy face of it, then crawled clear of the snow-banked edge and tumbled Jesse down onto his hands and knees.
There was a twist of metal like a mangled piece of rebar wedged into a crack on the rock face, half-hidden by the snow.
Another a couple feet below. Wyatt must have used them as footholds, shoved them in there on one of his perimeter checks, another contingency plan, and a freaking smart one at that.
Because when Wyatt reached down and knocked the rebar clear with the butt of his rifle, the fastest of the zombies was already there, already halfway up the steep rock face and mindlessly reaching for a handhold that didn’t exist anymore.
The zombie flailed, and fell, and hit the snowy ground below with a sickening, fleshy thud. No blood to spill though, just grungy sludge, and the stench was already overwhelming even out in the open.
“Fuck.” Jesse got his feet under him and tried to scrabble back, failed, tripped and slipped on slush and wheeled for balance until Wyatt caught him by the grab handle of his pack and yanked him back down again.
Jesse landed flat on his ass. The charley horse had set up a stable behind his ribs. He pressed the heel of his hand there, struggling to fill his lungs for the pain and the white-out bloom of panic.
Because below them, all around, zombies filled the clearing. They were moving slow now that they’d lost sight and scent.
But that weird moment of almost stillness, thin cloud over the low moon, the promise of more snow in the air — it wouldn’t last.
Jesse and Wyatt, they had supplies. They could camp out up on the rock, in some make-believe happily ever after, but there was no way the zombies would give up.
The horde would reboot. The second Jesse breathed too hard or Wyatt moved too quick, they’d stop glitching. The scent of human life still living would override everything. And then the horde would crush in on top of each other, just like back at the lake.
Climb on top of each other, pile up, a tumbling stampede, do any of the mindless, ravenous shit they needed to do until they could reach Wyatt and Jesse and tear them apart, to sate the hunger that never, ever stopped.
Because zombies never fucking stopped, not without a bullet to the brainstem, and Wyatt didn’t have enough bullets.
Fuck, not nearly enough.
“There’s so many of them,” Jesse whispered. Hundreds. A thousand, maybe, at the nightmarish end of that fucked-up estimate. A full horde by any definition either way. “Where the fuck did they even come from?”
Because Wyatt and Jesse and their cabin in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter — that was supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be safe. But there was nothing safe about any of this, and there was no way out. Not a single one that meant escaping with their lives.
A burning flash lit up the night. It set the zombie tide shrieking and Jesse whirling around.
He scrambled to stand up. A road flare was burning bright on the rock behind him, washing the bluff blood red. Jesse looked from the flare to Wyatt, his eyes wide with terror and already watering from the glare. “Are you fucking crazy! What the fuck are you doing?”
Wyatt didn’t answer. He reached for Jesse’s chest strap, flicking open a buckle. “Pack off.”
“What?” Jesse shook his head. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t have it in him to argue. Just let Wyatt ragdoll him.
His fingers were too numb to work the buckles anyhow.
He was shivering. Definitely in shock. Hypothermic, maybe, or way too close to it.
He couldn’t think straight already, but if that was the shock or the cold or the panic, Jesse didn’t know.
Couldn’t figure. Just like the buzzing in his ears, the low throb that wasn’t his racing pulse or the drone of the horde. That wasn’t anything that he could—
“Wait.”
Jesse turned toward the cliff edge, head first, body following on a delay, like some stupid, slo-mo, action-movie reveal.
“Is that…” Jesse blinked, because his eyes were fucking with him. They had to be. Just like his ears. “Is that…”
A faint, repetitive whump-whump-whump had Jesse squinting at the dark shape that was resolving itself against the faint blue of the dawning sky. Then it had Jesse choking on a breath, a crazy-sounding gasp, when he realized.
“Jesus fuck, Wyatt. Is that a freaking helicopter?”
Wyatt nodded, eyes not once leaving the horde swarming all around. He reloaded the rifle. Fired off another few rounds. Sent another few climbing zombies tumbling back down into the mass of them. “Called in a favor.”
“Some fucking favor!”
“Yup,” Wyatt agreed, sights fixed, not a single iota of attention left to spare.
The helicopter was coming in fast. Minutes away, tops.
But fuck, there were so many zombies. So many now that they were piling on top of each other, just like they had at the lake, but they didn’t sink this time, only grew in height, a fleshy, groaning wall of the undead reaching up, gaining another couple feet with every fresh wave.
Jesse didn’t need to be a military strategist to know that the horde was gonna overrun the outcrop before the helicopter even got close.
“We’re not gonna make it,” he racked out, his voice gone creaky from the weight of his fear, edged queasy with it. “We don’t have enough time.”
But Wyatt already knew that. Of course he fucking did.
“Jess, listen to me.” Wyatt dropped his own pack. He was busy loading his pockets with more ammo. “I need you to—”
“What are you doing?” Jesse asked. Stupid fucking thing to ask, though. Because he knew. He knew like Wyatt did. His gut knew, and his brain knew, and he wanted to be sick. Jesse shook his head so hard he made himself dizzy. “Wyatt, no.”
“Jess—”
“You can’t. You can’t. Fuck, I won’t let you.” He grabbed for Wyatt’s arm, like that was gonna do anything at all. “I won’t fucking let you.”
“Jess, sweetheart.” Wyatt’s voice sounded torn up, deadass shredded. He wrapped his free arm around Jesse’s waist and pulled him close. He kissed Jesse like kissing was breathing and Wyatt was drowning. Then he pulled away.
“Wyatt.” Jesse grabbed him by the wrist, a puke-worthy second of deja vu, clinging on with all his strength. “Don’t. Please.”
Wyatt broke Jesse’s grip like it was nothing at all. “Look after yourself, bud. That’s all I need you to do.” His palm cupped rough to Jesse’s cheek, like taking one last look at Jesse’s stupid fucking face was the single most important thing he had left to do.
Then Wyatt fired a clear path for himself and jumped down into the horde.
“Wyatt!” Jesse skidded to a stop at the edge of the bluff, only just, a buried-deep survival instinct. He watched, washed cold with horror, as Wyatt landed in a neat roll on the snow, already up and moving.
The horde juddered, ripples spreading in still water. They rippled like it took their mushed-up brains a second to recalibrate.
But that was all it took — one single second of stillness — because a second’s head start was all Wyatt got.
The horde turned to follow, that shambling, loping sprint that made Jesse’s blood freeze solid.
Wyatt was ahead of them as he made the tree line, but the horde was already gaining, and there were so freaking many of them. No way Wyatt could stay ahead for long. They’d catch him and they’d drag him down and then they’d—
“Fuck.” Jesse’s tears were flowing, blurring his vision. “Fuck!”
The helicopter was overhead now, the downdraft forcing Jesse to his knees, the kicked-up snow stinging his face, but he barely registered it. His blurry, aching eyes and all of his manic attention were fixed on the spot where Wyatt had disappeared into the trees.
Then something grabbed Jesse from behind — and he really fucking noticed that.
He flailed around, screaming. He flailed out too, but gloved hands grabbed his arms, stopping the limp as fuck punch he was about to throw.
Not a zombie grabbing him, thank fuck. A crewman from the hovering helicopter.
He was still attached to the hoist line, and he was saying something, shouting it, throwing out frantic gestures, but Jesse couldn’t hear him over the downdraft and the roar of his pulse in his ears.
Didn’t matter. The crewman manhandled him anyway, threading Jesse’s useless, flopping arms through a rescue harness. He spun Jesse around to do it, and in those few disorientated seconds, Jesse realized — he’d lost sight of Wyatt.
He spun back around and grabbed at the crewman’s arm, squeezing way too tight. “Wyatt! We gotta wait for Wyatt!”
The crewman shook his head. He was close enough to hear now when he yelled, “We can’t!”
“We can! We just gotta wait. He’ll be back. He always comes back!”
The crewman’s face screwed up with sympathy. He shook his head again. “He’s not coming back, man. You gotta know that.”
Jesse did, but it knocked all the air out of him anyhow. The rest of his body went as limp as his arms, the fight gone out of him, stupid and noodle-limbed enough for the crewman to manhandle Jesse where he needed him to be.
A hand signal to the crew in the helicopter, and then they went spiraling up into the dawning sky, clearing the treetops in seconds, high enough to see the darkness that was the horde carving its way through the forest down below.
Carving like a blunt knife, nothing clean, their attention fixated on a single point, a single figure.
Wyatt.
Jesse could trace his path by the faint and fading flare of his muzzle flash, then Jesse couldn’t see anything except the dark mass of the horde, moving as one, then stopping, converging, black against blacker black, a blood clot on the forest floor.
They’d caught what they were chasing.
They’d caught Wyatt.
And their screeching, the frenzied wail, Jesse could hear even over the roar of the helicopter.
A noise tore out of his chest, something between a sob and a scream. Arms wrapped tight around him and yanked him back — into the helicopter, up against a wall.
“Jesus.” The crewman slung an arm around Jesse and hauled him into his side. “You’re okay, man. You’re good. We got you.”
They did. God, they did. They’d risked their lives to save him, and they got him. They had him, safe.
But they didn’t have Wyatt.
Jesse didn’t have Wyatt.
And he never would again.