Chapter Sixteen #3
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s not safe to let you out there without a place to bed down. You’ll just have to spend the night.” Connor smiles, and it’s a cold, bloodthirsty thing. “After you fill in on C Crew’s shift, of course. It begins in four hours.”
Nine p.m.? Yeah, there’s no way in hell I’m going out on killing patrol with these hot-ass weirdos.
“Maisie, with your martial arts training, I’d like you to stay behind and lead our evening fitness class. Everett will be fine out there with our C Crew. Just like pickleball, right, buddy?” Connor slaps me on the shoulder, giving me the grin of a man who clearly intends on sleeping with my wife.
Fake wife, Everett! Fake!
Nope. Doesn’t work. Blood still boiling.
Maisie’s eyes find mine, and I can tell she believes me now about Connor’s nefarious plans for us both. She nods imperceptibly.
Just then, a crash explodes from the employee kitchen, followed by a scream. Connor turns toward the noise, and the second he does, I charge him, shoulder-first, straight into his gut.
Just like Ms. Shenandoah taught me.
The weird, breathy herrf that punches out of Connor’s disgustingly muscular abdomen is music to my ears as his feet briefly rise from the floor before he’s rammed backward, into the wall. His head claps against the mirrored glass, hard enough to leave his stupid face dazed.
“Well done, Professor!” Maisie’s eyes light up, and my heart sings from the praise.
“Get the keys!” I yell, but Maisie’s already on it, bent over and rummaging through Connor’s gym shorts pockets. She yanks them out, but not before Connor locks his fingers around her wrists and grunts.
“You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart.” He sneers at her, which quickly turns into confusion when she headbutts him neatly right in the decision-maker.
With injuries to the back and front of his skull now, Connor has the real-life equivalent of the Looney Tunes birdies circling around his head.
He lets go of her, hands falling limply to his sides.
More screams erupt from the kitchen, and the unmistakable sound of snarling. Ripping.
Tearing.
“Someone’s turned!” Maisie breathes out, her eyes wide. I immediately remember Weird Marching Guy, and a thrill of fear washes down my spine. “Quick, let’s go!”
I grab Chicken’s carrier in one hand and Maisie’s hand in the other, and together, we race toward the front doors.
Connor’s gym-cult emporium devolves into utter chaos as the screams multiply, fold in on themselves, then explode once more.
We leave it all behind, but not before Maisie grabs a couple of machetes from beside the door and leads us out into the eerie, waning light.
Maisie
I scale up the tractor tires first, then reach down for Chicken’s carrier. She hisses as she’s jostled to the back, and I cringe, hoping she won’t hold this against me. Cats don’t hold grudges, do they?
Everett scrambles up next, if not gracefully then at least adequately.
The nerve of Connor calling him a “fixer-upper” grates on me all over again.
But I can’t be too mad—judging by the new tenor of screaming from inside, the freshly made zombies have reached him now, too.
The turning happened so fast. It must’ve been one of the people on A Crew who came in, and must’ve been from a bite, because nobody looked sick.
Guess immunity means nothing in the face of a bite, which, terrifying.
Perched on top of the tire wall, I look out at a sea of corpses. I nearly stagger off the side. The perimeter isn’t just tires, it turns out, but a maze of stacked dead bodies. The stink of it is all-consuming. So this is what Connor’s crews did with the zombies they killed.
It’s horrific. Pragmatic, but horrific.
I can’t believe I didn’t see the truth about Connor sooner.
Beyond the labyrinth of rotting flesh, upright zombies butt softly against the fortifications.
They’re not fully active yet, but most are swaying in place, and some have begun to walk already.
Their eyes emit a faint, flickering glow, like the light that dances on the underbellies of bridges.
There are hundreds of zombies in the street, and dozens directly surrounding the gym.
And we have no Tasers, two machetes, and a furious, yowling cat.
“We can’t go down there.” I straighten to standing, wobbling as the top tire’s wall dips uncertainly beneath my feet, bowing toward its hollow middle. I quickly rebalance at the tire’s outer edge, where it’s thickest. “We have to walk the tires.”
Everett’s still breathing heavily from our escape, his legs dangling down the hollow middle of the tire stack as he sits.
His eyes trail up to mine, doubtful, but maybe Connor’s cruel assessment of Everett’s abilities is still ringing in his ears, too, because he doesn’t argue and begins climbing out of the stack.
The rubber groans against whatever epoxy Connor’s crew used to build this perimeter, but it holds as Everett steadies himself at the top.
On this one task, he may actually have the advantage over me.
While I have to jump from one tire edge across the opening to the other, or shuffle my way around the perimeter, Everett’s able to cross them with one long stride.
The zombies have begun to watch us. Pool-water eyes reflecting up to watch each of my jumps, each of his steps.
And then, I hear it. The deep, rumbling undertone of an air conditioner humming in the background.
It thrums on the wind’s back, like the breath of a great, sleeping monster slowly waking up. Which, I guess, is exactly what it is.
A man missing half his face thrusts himself at the nearest wall of corpses, reaching for me.
“Everett,” I say, stumbling forward. “They’re waking up!”
“Our gym friends are back, too!” The slick crunch of breaking fingers punctuates each of Everett’s footsteps.
They are everywhere, surrounding us on both sides, the neighborhood zombies held off momentarily by Connor’s flesh walls, and the gym rats directly below us to the right.
God, I wish we had our Tasers. The tire wall simply isn’t tall enough for us to stay up here all night.
Our best shot is to get somewhere zombie hands can’t reach. But where?
My eyes quickly scan the horizon in a clockwise sweep of terror.
Ahead, in the last patch of sunlight, appears to be the neighborhood park. At the crest of its hill, a purple roof with yellow plastic walls, a hot-pink tongue of a slide lolling out.
A fort.
“The playground, up ahead!” I take another bounding leap across a tire, arms spinning backward as one of the gym rats takes a bite out of the rubber directly by my foot and swallows.
Good god.
Everett’s there behind me, supporting my back and keeping me from falling into the tire’s middle, or worse, the throng of zombies slowly coming online. There’s no escaping it, though—we have to jump down, we have to run, and we have to be fast.
“Grab my waistband!” I yell at Everett. Without question, he sinks his warm fingers into the back of my jeans possessively. I love the way he trusts me, and I vow to do better by him on this, too. Because Everett knew Connor was dangerous while I was still asking about supplies.
With my feet braced apart and Everett’s strong grip keeping me level, I sink both machetes into the skulls of the zombies waiting below. With Everett grounding me, I clear a few more out of our way, but more are coming.
“On the count of three, we jump down, and we run like hell for that playground. Only hack who tries to eat us, okay?”
“Wait!” Everett unlatches the metal grate of Chicken’s carrier and pulls the small gray cat out.
She’s pissed, but seems less so after he deposits her onto his shoulder.
She hunches over hissing, claws out like a gargoyle.
He flings the carrier at a zombie’s head, hard, knocking it over like a bowling pin. “Okay!”
“One, two, three!” We leap, side by side, into the street. Heads turn toward us, as though their glazed, gleaming eyes still see. Maybe they can, or maybe it’s our smell guiding their clumsy feet forward. We run through the maze, gagging from the stench, until we reach the exit onto the road.
The moaning grows, rising around us like a specter, everywhere and nowhere, pulling at my insides with a sick, nauseating tug.
I run faster. Force my feet to grind into the pavement, propel my body forward.
I want to look at Everett, want the assurance he’s right behind me, that he’s still there.
That he’s still him. But I can’t. If I turn, I’ll stumble. I’ll trip.
And what if he’s not? What if I’m alone?
Hands buffet me, fingernails scrabbling against my skin, seeking purchase in my flesh.
The slash of my machete parts heads from bodies, splits jaws in half.
A woman in a nightgown appears suddenly beside me, groans in my ear as I try, and fail, to pull my machete out of an old man’s head.
A red line appears between her glowing eyes, ending at her nose, and she sinks to the concrete.
Everett’s still behind me.
We’ve reached the grassy hill, and already the zombies begin to slow behind us, their ability to traverse anything but flat ground incredibly limited.
We don’t slow down, though, and there are still zombies in this park.
Just fewer of them, and that is advantage enough.
Everett wheezes behind me. Something crunches.
“Fuck! My glasses!”
“Keep running, I’ll lead you!” I grab at his hand and pull.
The playground is just ahead. Ignore the children standing there, eyes wide and glowing. Ignore their missing limbs. Climb the ladder, keep going as the bloody soles of my shoes slip and squeak.