Cherish Applebottoms's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

The horde boiled into the diner's lot. The group watched through the cracked window as the dead piled onto the fallen civilians. Chewing the flesh from the corpses body’s fighting over the scraps of the fallen victims.As a few more banged at the back door. She turned to the detective who had saved her life minutes ago, a cop named Graves with a torn uniform and a pistol she kept holstered now to stay quiet. Doom Medical was the rally point. The dead stood between them and it. "We can't cut straight across," Graves said. She wiped blood from her baton. "I know these streets. She pointed past the cracked window, toward a gap between buildings. "Side alley. Cuts behind the gas station. Comes out two lots from the clinic." (Cherish did not move. She knew the Lisa, and Liz had proved she’s trustworthy but she did not know the detective. A route only Graves could see was either a gift or a mouth waiting to close.) Lisa stood at the front window, machete loose in her hand. Lisa met Cherish's eyes, trusting Cherish to call it. Liz gripped her bat. "Could be she's walking us somewhere worse!" Graves heard it. She didn't soften. "I pulled you out of the mud twice. If I wanted you dead, I'd have left you once the runners approached!" She pointed at the swelling horde. (Cherish thought of the old woman's throat opening in the road. She thought of how Graves had stepped between her and the leaping runner without being asked. A trap didn't do that. She tightened her grip on the crowbar.) "How do you know it's clear?" Cherish asked. "I don't," Graves said. "I know it's shorter. That's all I've got." "Fair," Graves said. The detective already had her hand on a cracked side window. "Stay here we’re as good as dead," Graves said. Cherish studied her. "Why that way?" Cherish asked. "Fewer open lots. More cover." Graves checked her pistol. "Trust me or don't. The door won't hold." They slipped out a back window into fog, down a narrow street. Graves cut left along a fence, fast and quiet, exactly where she'd said. The route hugged walls and wrecks. Graves moved like she'd walked it a hundred times, hugging walls, cutting fast around a dead truck. No ambush came. The route was real. No open ground. Then the gas station arose out of the mist. Sagging roof, shattered pumps, vines dripping from the awning. Graves raised a fist to stop them. Two zombies shuffled between the rusted pumps, sniffing the wet air dragging their feet through green muck. A third knelt in the weeds, vines tangled through her gray hair, chewing a severed arm. (Cherish scanned the station the nodded at Lisa and Liz.) Liz swung the bat into the nearest zombie's skull. It dropped into the muddy gas station. The second turned. Lisa stepped past and split its head with the machete. Then the kneeling hag screeched and lunged, faster than her rotted legs should move. Cherish moved first. But Graves assisted by swing for the hags knees (causing a shattering echo) Cherish finished the hag off with three blunt hits. “Wack….A….Mole” Cherish said with each strike. Then a scream tore across the lot. High, wet, not human. Something crawled into the forecourt. It moved wrong, low and wrapped, spine jutting as it dragged itself forward. The scream tore across the swamp again. The group froze. It was not one of them. It came from past the gas station, swallowed by fog. Graves raised a fist. "Inside. Now." They ducked through the station's broken door and went low behind the counter. Through the shattered window, the group watched something crawl into the forecourt, dragging itself over the dead they had just dropped. It knelt by a corpse. It sniffed. Then it lifted a torn arm and began to chew, slow and wet. It grabbed a second body by the ankle, then it clicked, a dry sound, and hauled the body away into the fog, hoarding the dead like food for later. “What is it taking the bodies?" Lisa breathed. ( An expression of pure shock and horror on her face!) Cherish had never seen a zombie keep its kill. Lisa pressed flat beside her, breath held. "That's not a runner," Liz whispered. "That's something else." Nobody answered. They waited until the clicking faded. Then they grabbed water bottles, a few food items and gauze off the station shelves and stuffed them in their pack. "Move. Before it comes back." Graves said as she kept watch. Graves took them down the gas station's far side and into a side alley. The alley behind the station opened exactly where Graves promised. At its end stood a weathered building, with vines on the sign reading,DOOM MEDICAL painted on its front. The shortcut had been true. Cherish felt the knot in her chest loosen. They'd made it. "Told you," Graves said, flat. But the lot was empty. No truck. No Marcus. No Victoria. Cherish scanned the broken window and felt cold. Marcus and Victoria had split off to draw the horde. They should have beaten her here. They hadn't. The clinic windows were dark, they crossed the parking lot and shoved through the clinic door. Cherish's chest loosened. They'd made it. "They should be here," Lisa said, voice tight. (Liz scanning the area.) Marcus was supposed to meet them here. Marcus and Victoria weren't here. The rally point was empty of them. And from the dark hallway behind the front desk, something shifted. A slow, deliberate scrape of weight against the floor. They were not alone!