Page 8

Chaos was around her, but the zombies were dying. She could see them falling under machetes, spears, and bullets. Nearby, she saw one of the fort people struggling to get a runner off his back as the thing gnawed away at the back of his neck. Blood rained around the man’s terrified face as he screamed.

“Dammit! They got Bob!”

The words had barely left her lips when someone fired two shots, killing both the runner and Bob.

Jenni twisted around as she felt something brush her shoulder. It was Felix tripping over a body at their feet. He recovered quickly and fired two shots into the face of a slower, decayed zombie trying to grab him. The runners were down, their blood making the road slick. Their remains were tripping up the rest of the zombies shambling toward the fort people.

Feeling the heat of battle in her veins, Jenni marched toward the slower zombies, ax poised. Felix fell in beside her, Ed on her other side, and together they decimated the stumbling creatures. The zombies were slow and stupid. As long as she didn’t let herself get cornered, it wasn’t too hard to get them off their feet and down on the ground. Once there, it was easy for her to plant one boot on their decaying body and slam her ax down on their head.

Felix kicked the feet out from under a zombie and shot it point blank in the face. “I hate these things. ”

“And we’re done,” Ed said.

Jenni looked up from the zombie she had just dispatched. A bit of its nose and brain were still sticking to the ax blade, and she shook it off. The road was littered with the dead. She took a few deep breaths and instantly regretted it due to the stench. Jenni felt her heart beating hard in her chest. Suddenly, she was aware of her uneven breathing and her arms aching from the blows she had administered with her ax. When she had been fighting, she had felt nothing but the exhilaration of killing the damned things. Now she hurt all over.

“Anyone bit?” Ed’s voice was hard.

The grizzled older man turned, looking over the people scattered along the road. Katarina was standing over Bob, a sad expression on her face.

“I said, is anyone bit? Look yourselves over. ”

Up on the van, Jenni saw the people they had saved getting to their knees.

They had been lying in a heap, holding on to the luggage rack for dear life.

There was an older Indian couple, two small children with the biggest and darkest eyes she had ever seen, a huge man with dark hair and unruly chops on his cheeks, a slender young man in Indian garb, and an older woman dressed in a flowing skirt and blouse.

“You okay up there?”

“No one is bit up here,” the big man answered her. He was heavily muscled and looked like a wrestler.

The gore around the van was making Jenni’s stomach heave. The man she had seen fall from the van was consumed down to the bone. Only his head was partially intact with his skull gleaming under strips of flesh. She was drawing close when she saw the jaws open and close.

“That’s fucked up,” Felix decided in a trembling voice, then shot it.

“It’s brain was intact,” Jenni muttered. She felt her stomach roll over and she stopped in mid-step. Gore surrounded her and the stench of death was unbearable. Felix rubbed her back and she closed her eyes, regaining her composure. She heard the little kids on the van crying and she shoved her discomfort away.

“Let’s get you guys down,” she said, reaching up.

Behind her, Ed and Curtis were checking out the people from the fort. A bite was lethal. There was no cure. Whatever revived the dead was carried in the saliva of the zombies and it always turned their victims if the brain remained intact. But victims didn’t always just die and come back. On several occasions, people bitten merely turned and attacked.

Maybe a scientist could explain why this sometimes occurred, but as far as anyone knew, the scientists were all dead.

The huge guy jumped down from the van and barely caught himself from slipping on the blood and guts. “Damn. Messy. Poor Jacob. ”

Jenni reached up to help one of the kids down, but the little girl shied away, hiding her face in the folds of the older woman’s sari.

“Jenni, are you bit?”

She looked over at Curtis and shook her head.

“I need to check. Fort rules, you know. ”

Sighing, Jenni lowered her hands and stepped away from the van.

Holding out her arms, legs spread, she let Curtis check her. He even looked behind her ears. With a curt nod, he moved on to check on Felix.

Turning, she reached up again. This time, the grandmother muttered a few words to the little girl and scooted her to the edge. As Jenni’s hands went around the child’s waist, she looked up into the enormous, black eyes fearfully gazing down at her. “It’s okay,” Jenni promised.