“Where's Amanda?”
“Right behind me.”
“Just ahead. Keep going. Keep
going. The cave is just up ahead.”
The shotgun fired off again behind
them. The din from the biters was deafening; tattered, shrieked
words and wordless screams of anger accompanied frantic scrabbling
through the woods as the group came.
Ben heard one of the traps snap shut,
but if they'd caught any of the creatures, he couldn't tell over the
other racket. The shotgun fired again, and he heard Ed shouting but
could not tell what Ed was shouting or at whom.
Amanda screamed in pain. Travis,
ahead of the other two, immediately turned back to her, in the same
instant her pistol fired twice. “Go, go, go!” she shouted.
“I've got it!”
“I see it!” Ben shouted. Tucked
into tall limestone face of the riverfront cliff before them was a
narrow crack, barely wide enough for a single person to fit through.
He bolted to the opening, turning with his own handgun out to cover
Travis and Amanda as they came, Travis dragging Amanda as blood
spread from her left thigh, her snow-pants torn open there. “In,
in, in,” he said, and Travis pushed Amanda in ahead of him.
She had to turn sideways to get in,
leaning heavily on the cave wall, unable to lift her injured leg well
enough to walk properly. Travis ducked down and turned to the side
to follow her through the narrow opening. Behind them, Ben eased in,
going backwards so he could still face out. A furious, badly
damaged, red-eyed face appeared at the edge of the doorway and he
shot, missing on the first shot and taking it down on the second. He
felt Travis grab the back of his coat and keep him moving further
into the cave.
They came into a wider, taller room.
In the failing light from outside, Travis could see garbage all over,
including the remains of untold campfires in a rock circle in the
center of the room. He let go of Amanda to take a spot on the left
side of the entrance to the room, pulling Ben back into the room and
pushing him to the right. Behind them he heard Amanda bite back a
groan of pain, and then heard dragging as she pulled a cushion-less
couch toward them, pushing it into the narrow opening.
She stayed low in a three-legged dog
crawl, her injured leg slowing her down, and continued to drag or
push the larger debris into the tunnel while Travis and Ben fired
their weapons at any movement in the cave opening. At this point,
she realized, Ed was either going to have to make it clear he was
approaching if any of the movement was him, or he'd be shot.
Seemed like just dues to her in this
moment.
Finally she'd wedged enough crap into
the room opening that it could be adequately covered by a single
person, just in time for her to stagger and fall to the floor of the
room.
“Amanda!” Travis called out, fear
in his voice.
“Got this, help her,” Ben said.
He placed a flashlight on a barrel in front of him in the tunnel and
turned it on, causing shrieks of pain as the light hit the red-eyed
rioters. Behind the light now, he was harder to see, and they were
quite easy to pick off. He thought he might have heard Ed's shotgun
again. “Don't get eaten, asshole,” Ben muttered, firing and
hitting a biter scrambling toward them through the tunnel with a
direct head shot, dropping it. They could only easily come through
one at a time.
Travis lifted Amanda and carried her
to a filthy mattress on the other side of the long-dead campfire. He
pulled his own flashlight out and shone it over her, assessing.
“Hold this,” he said, handing her the flashlight, positioning her
hand so the light shone on her left thigh.
He quickly shrugged his backpack off
and unzipped it. She groaned as he pressed a bandage firmly to the
torn flesh of her thigh, applying strong pressure. “Did he have a
fucking ax?” Travis said, his voice strained.
Amanda managed a grin. “No, but I
think he had a shark mouth.” Travis did not laugh.
“This is a bite?”
“Yup.” She exhaled, closing her
eyes in pain. “Between that mouth and this mattress, I'm going to
need a hundred antibiotics.”
“Easily a couple hundred,” he
said. The wound was deep and gaping, and he realized the biter had
possibly eaten the missing flesh. He blanched and swallowed sickly.
It was also wide enough the creature had probably gotten at least a
couple of bites in before Amanda had stopped it.
Ben's 9mm fired three times in quick
succession.
“And fuck you too,” they heard him
yell.
“Hold this,” Travis said to
Amanda.
“Now is not the time,” she said,
her eyes still closed.
“Amanda,” he said sharply. “Hold
pressure on the wound. I'm going to get a decent wrapping out and
bandage you properly so I can help Ben.”
“Oh, fine,” she said, and placed
her hand over his on her leg. She felt him move his hand, felt him
rummaging around in the backpack. The flashlight swayed in her
other hand and he took it from her, setting it on the ground facing
her.
“Where's your backpack?” he asked.
“My first aid supplies are a bit limited in the face of current
need.”
“I let the zombie have it. He
really wanted it.”
He padded her bandage up more, moving
her hand out of the way for a moment, then had her hold the bandage
in place again while he tightly duct taped it down. “Ok. I'm
going to move you around a bit.” She could hear the fear in his
voice and understood what he was not saying, understood how bad the
wound looked, how much blood she'd lost. He carefully lifted her
legs and then her upper body, spreading a space blanket beneath her
and helping her lay back down.
Travis hurriedly stuffed debris
beneath the mattress to elevate her feet. “I'm going to start a
fire to get you warm,” he said, his voice carrying only barely over
the gunshots.
“Gonna need a reload,” Ben called.
“Stay right here,” Travis said,
and ran to bring Ben his own gun, taking Ben's to reload while Ben
used Travis' gun to keep the zombies back. He set the reloaded gun
on the barrel in front of Ben. “Gun is next to the flashlight,
reloaded,” he said. “You got this, or you need back up?”
“So far, so good,” Ben said.
“Keep an eye on Princess Toadstool.”
“I'm BOWSER,” Amanda yelled, and
Travis felt his stomach drop at how weak she sounded, how thin her
voice was. He was at her side again in a second, kneeling beside
her, sweeping her with the flashlight.
“Any other injuries?” he asked.
“Tell my wife-”
“Don't,” he said, tightly. “I'm
not laughing, Amanda.”
“Oh, Travis,” she sighed. “I'm
ok. Just the bite. Just tired.”
He checked the bandage again, his face
grim, then covered her up with another space blanket from his
backpack.
She sighed with relief as he started a
fire up in the stone fire circle in the middle of the room, throwing
light and heat into the room. She stared up at the ceiling, noting
the smoke stains up there, watching the smoke from this fire rise and
join the remnants of the campfire smoke that had come before it. How
pretty, she thought.
Travis pulled the blanket back enough
to check her bandage, silently applying another layer of bandage and
pressing down hard. She groaned softly, her brows pulling together
and up in the middle. He lifted her hand with his free hand and
kissed it. “I'm sorry I'm hurting you, sweetheart,” he said, but
didn't ease up at all on the pressure against her wound.
“Travis, got time for a reload?”
Ben called.
“Hold this down as hard as you can,”
he said to Amanda, placing her hand over her bandage. “Press hard.
Come on, Amanda, show me what you got.”
He was back in moments, taking over
applying pressure, squeezing her hand a bit as he moved it out of his
way.
“I love you, Travis. Even though
you're mean,” she said, grinning at him through the pain.
“That's my charm,” he said. “I
love you too, Amanda. Once we clear these assholes, we're going to
get you back to Dana and get you properly patched up. Just hang in
there.”
“Herd's thinning, but I am still
seeing movement out there,” Ben said. “Probably not long now.”
“Cannot believe our lives are in
your hands, Ben,” Amanda said.
“Ben the RANGER,” Ben said.
“Kicking ass. 'Cause Amanda got hurt like a GIRL.”
“You sound like a sad boy who got
his ass kicked by a girl,” Amanda said, her face still drawn in
pain, though she was not squirming with it anymore.
“You were that girl, Amanda the
Bruiser!”
“I like it,” she said. “The
Bruiser. Bowser Bruiser, MD.”
Finally, it was quiet, the guns
silent, no growling or shrieking from their attackers. “How are we
looking back there?” Ben called.
“She's trying to fall asleep,”
Travis said. “We need to get her home now.”
“I'm going to scout out the mouth of
the cave,” Ben said. “If it's clear, I'm going to run for one of
the snowmobiles and bring it back here. Then one of us will get her
home, ok? And the other will go back to the other snowmobile and
take that home.”
“Ed?”
“I'm thinking he can spend the night
in the deer stand,” Ben said flatly. “I'm thinking he could use
the time for quiet reflection on what a colossal dick he is and how
it should have been him who got bitten.”
“At the very least,” Travis said,
his voice lethally quiet.
Ben cautiously began to clear the
debris. Travis came to keep him covered while he did, taking back
his own gun. The tunnel beyond the debris barricade was blood-soaked
and littered with silent, unmoving zombie bodies. The men stood
there without speaking for long moments, listening for any movement
outside the cave. “Heading out,” Ben said in a low voice. “Stay
with her. I'll be back as soon as I can with the snowmobile.”
“Whistle if you come back in,
because if I hear movement and no snowmobile, I'm shooting.”
“Good.” Ben picked up his
flashlight, holding it in his left hand below and supporting the gun in his right as he moved forward.
As he slid sideways out of the cave,
picking his way past the bodies, something moved on the cliff face
above him.
The alpha dropped down on top of him
with a guttural growl.
In the early daylight, Ed fired up his
snowmobile, following the trail left by the fleeing trio and the
horde of biters chasing them. Pulling up outside the cave Amanda had
told him they were heading to, he found Ben, on his back, his body
already beginning to freeze. He killed the engine and stood, coming
to inspect the scene.
Laying next to him was the alpha, distinguishable by the relatively minor damage previously sustained; unlike its followers, this biter was not covered in scars or missing fingers or ears. However, it had a pulped chest. Ed assumed Ben had managed to fire upwards into the creature's chest even as the creature tore his throat out.
Laying next to him was the alpha, distinguishable by the relatively minor damage previously sustained; unlike its followers, this biter was not covered in scars or missing fingers or ears. However, it had a pulped chest. Ed assumed Ben had managed to fire upwards into the creature's chest even as the creature tore his throat out.
Ed shook his head. Hell of a way to
go, but he had to admit the kid was tougher than he'd figured. He
pulled out his flashlight and shone it into the cave, calling out.
“Hey! You guys in there?”
No answer. He slowly eased into the
cave, working to keep his footing as he stepped around the freezing
bodies of the biters cluttering up the tunnel. Ahead he could see a
dismantled barricade of some sort leading into a larger room.
Warily, he stepped into the bigger room, shining his flashlight ahead
of him.
There was the blonde, white and waxen,
lovingly tucked in as if she merely slept. She neither moved nor
breathed, and he knew she hadn't made it. He didn't see Travis
anywhere.
At least, not until he saw Travis'
fist, and then saw nothing else.