Part 7 (2/2)

Dejah managed to stay low in the shadows for the majority of the distance. She struggled with the weight of the duffel bag, but needed the supplies too much to ditch the stuff. Up ahead lay a run-down strip mall with a parking lot that looked like it had been through World War II. The asphalt was cratered, weeds growing through cracks. It was scattered with a few cars. Lights were on in the stores a Dollar Tree the size of a supermarket, a Chinese food restaurant, an insurance broker, and a dry cleaner. Beyond the strip was an intersection with another six-lane road. Her heart leaped as she realized it was Pioneer Parkway. At the same time, her stomach growled.

She crouched behind a concrete barrier, mulling over how she'd get across the parking lot. She knew that Pioneer Parkway curved down a small slope before it crossed Mountain Creek Lake. Her plan was to reach the toll bridge and go across that way, to travel east.

Five infected people roamed across the parking lot, one of them wandering into the street. She saw two others crouched over some kind of gruesome meal. She didn't look too hard. It was enough to know they were there. Fighting the mental images, she could imagine what they were eating. The scent of rotting flesh greeted her nose.

Nausea overcame her as she bolted from her place of hiding. She ran full speed to make it behind the strip mall and cut through its rear lot. Adrenalin surged, giving her more speed. She scanned the lot to see if any of the nearby flesh-eaters had cued into her presence, but she made it around the corner unnoticed.

She breathed heavy, cold air harsh in her lungs as she pressed her back against the cool white brick, closing her eyes.

Something stirred in the dumpster next to her.

She held her breath.

The dark green dumpster was just three feet away. She fixated on it like fugitive might fixate on a prowling cop car. Her eyes searched for an escape, a place to hide, but there were fifty yards of wide-open parking lot between here and the slope leading down to the bridge. She looked back to the dumpster.

It was quiet now.

Probably just a cat, right? A mouse, or rat maybe. Nothing to lose your mind over. Dejah was riveted in place. She willed herself to move, to turn her back on the dumpster and run for the slope. Now. She stepped away from the wall.

The top of the dumpster opened with a rusty screech. What rose from the fetid darkness within was a horror all its own. She must have once been a handsome black woman before she'd been homeless and the wiry gray dreadlocks began to fray, soaked in vomit and garbage. The skin of her face was black as greasepaint, sagging in folds over the bony features of her skull. The muscles beneath her skin had long ago withered from lack of food, but now she'd finally found something to nourish her hunger in her right hand she held a broken cat, eaten most of the way through the furry gullet, its white spine s.h.i.+ning like teeth in the moonlight, innards trailing wet from the cavity.

As soon as the woman saw Dejah, she released the cat from ragged fingernails and bared her teeth in a silent threat. Her eyes were rolled so far back into her head that all Dejah could see were the bloodshot whites.

The infected woman crawled from the dumpster with deliberate movements, stiff but determined. Dejah thought she could hear the woman's tendons creak as she edged over the rim of the bin, fixed on her prey.

Dejah broke into a run. Across the narrow lot behind the strip mall was a drop-off into brush. Over the brush she could see the light of street lamps sloping down to the Mountain Creek Lake toll bridge, following the curve of the parkway.

She ran toward the back of an 18-wheeler parked in eternal mid-delivery behind Dollar Tree. Dejah veered around the end of the trailer. Soon as she rounded the back, she ran headlong into a man. Dejah screamed as she barreled into him. The weight of the duffel bag hammering her side threw her off balance. She fell, tangling limbs with him.

Immediately she knew he was infected. When he groaned a foul stench rose from his face. She felt his movements beneath her, felt his hands gripping her limbs. Bony fingers tightened on her arms. She yanked back her head. His face was that of a crazed, starving man. The way he gnashed his teeth looked like maniacal laughter.

Instinctively, she head-b.u.t.ted him. The infected man groaned, but the defensive move had little effect. She pulled her right arm free, skin gashed by his gripping fingernails. Panicked, Dejah fought the man, using her right hand in a hammer-fist, rapidly pummeling him to free herself. She struck him repeatedly in the face. His nose snapped. The man gurgled blood. She continued to strike, caving in his face, cracking the central bones...all the places that by all rights should've been fatal blows. In a disturbed version of one of The Three Stooges famous moves, she used her two fingers to ram into his eyes. She hooked his eyeb.a.l.l.s with her fingers, popping them with a disgusting sucking sound from the gore within his sockets. Still he squirmed, but it was enough to blind him so he couldn't antic.i.p.ate her next movement. She ripped a shred of her new s.h.i.+rt from his grasp and scrambled to her feet.

The black woman from the dumpster had caught up during the fray. Her claw-like hands dug into Dejah's flesh. She screamed and tried to lunge toward the drop-off leading into the brush.

Dejah flung herself over the concrete wall, but the infected woman clung to her and fell with her. They tumbled in mid-air. The impact, when they reached the bottom, came sooner, and much differently, than Dejah had been prepared for strands of barbed wire fencing were buried in the brush.

Dejah came down sideways on the barbed wire fence. The duffel bag, still wrapped across her chest, yanked her down. Her body bent sideways, spine aching with a painful twist. She tried to throw herself away from her attacker in a move that ripped the muscles in her torso and back. Metal barbs tore open her s.h.i.+rt, ripped into her skin. She thrust backward, throwing her legs into the air, but the woman clung desperately to her. Dejah could smell rotting trash, could feel the virulence of her sickness and hunger, the scent of decay on her breath.

They landed together on the opposite side of the fence. Dejah's breath whooshed from her lungs at the impact. The woman atop her growled. With a mad clawing that ripped away part of Dejah's s.h.i.+rt, the woman bared sharp teeth and bit the flesh of her exposed breast.

”Ahhhhh!” Dejah pulled away and felt a piece of her go with the infected woman. She thrashed again, not knowing what she was doing, just responding to the panic in a flurry of physical violence. Her struggle freed her from the woman's grip.

She scrambled to her feet and half-slipped half-ran down the gra.s.sy slope toward the parkway. Frantically, she felt the back of her pants, checking that she hadn't lost her revolver in the scuffle. She yanked it out to use on the next sorry motherf.u.c.ker that decided to take a piece of her.

Dejah reached the edge of the parkway. It followed a gentle curve down to the lake. The tollbooth of the bridge leading across the lake glowed like a lighthouse in the storm. Beyond the tollgate, the bridge stretched almost two miles, lampposts along each side softly gleaming. The light of the moon caught the faceted waves of the lake. On the far side, atop a hill, the steepled main campus of Dallas Baptist University stood in gothic repose against the velvet backdrop of night.

Dejah quickly took in her surroundings. A wide swath of gra.s.sy area led to the sh.o.r.e of the lake, forest deeper behind her...but you're already out in the open. Best to get to the bridge, get a vehicle...go!

She sprinted for the toll bridge.

Cars were stalled on the bridge, but not too thick. It wasn't hopeless. If she could find a vehicle with keys, she could make it across. There were infected lurching around looking for their next victim; and with all her screaming earlier, they must know she was there. But ... but nothing, just run.

The faster she ran toward the bridge, the more the infected emerged from her surroundings. They materialized from the darkness, lumbering visions of decay and hunger. She didn't have enough bullets to take them all. She had to find a vehicle and lock herself inside, and pray to G.o.d that they'd eventually go away...otherwise, she was finished.

Movement inside the glowing tollbooth on the bridge caught her eye. She did a double take to make sure she really saw a figure waving from inside the booth, motioning her in.

Twelve figures shambled in a scattered pattern between her and the tollbooth. But at this point her heart filled with such hope at seeing another uninfected person (dear G.o.d I hope it's another uninfected person) that the vision steeled her resolve.

Dejah ground her teeth against the ebbing pain of her wounds, and ran for it.

CHAPTER 13.

Shaun was just drifting into a haunted sleep when a blur on the monitor caught his attention. He watched the zombies emerge from places he hadn't even known they'd been, which gave him a s.h.i.+ver, because he'd been tracking them, thinking he knew where they were hiding, thinking he'd make a break for it at some point. So much for that.

He wondered if any of them could reason. Perhaps they were trying to outsmart him, wait until he thought it was clear and make a run for it...he shook his head to erase the thought.

They were moving deliberately back toward town, away from the lake, as if drawn by a unified purpose. Shaun looked at the other monitor, its camera facing the other direction. On the screen, he saw a woman standing on the crest of the hill. She was running. Lurching rather...a large duffel bag weighing her down on one side. She was b.l.o.o.d.y, but she was alive. The way she moved told him she wasn't one of them...not yet.

He froze, heart racing, rapt on the vision of her coming down the hill. He wanted to jump and yell and tell her here, here I am, but instinct kept him from doing that right away, reminded him that he was safe in here for now. Scooter whined. The dog c.o.c.ked its head, looking at him.

”I've got to help her if I can,” he told Scooter. The dog lapped his hand. Shaun absently scratched the pooch's ear. Then he turned and edged his head above the bottom of the booth to peer out the window. There were about twelve or thirteen zombies between her and the booth. She could make it if she ran for it, but if any more time went by...the infected zombies were pouring from the forest now, coming from all directions. Their numbers overcame him with hopelessness and panic.

I can't let her die. Not like that.

He jumped up and down waving, trying to catch her attention. ”Hey! Hey lady! Over here!” His voice was loud and he didn't know if she could hear him, but it felt good to yell, and he did it some more as she sprinted toward the booth. He watched the woman as she dodged the zombies, nearing the tollgate. Shaun struggled with the lock.

”Come on, d.a.m.n it, come on.” He rattled the lock. It was jammed. The woman the wounded, and grimy, but beautiful woman yanked frantically on the other side of the door.

”Let me in!” her m.u.f.fled voice urged.

”I'm trying!”

The herd of zombies moved toward her en ma.s.se.

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