Dead Hunt

CHAPTER 15 – Crossroads

She walked on and on and had no way of knowing exactly how long she had been moving but knew it must have been at least a few hours. The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, nothing more than a brief sun shower. Lucy thought God must be mocking her, as the summer heat had returned in all its blistering glory. Her foot didn’t hurt as much, or perhaps it had just gone completely numb. Lucy wasn’t quite sure which, but at least the pain had subsided a little.

“With my luck, I’ll get gangrene and they’ll have to amputate,” Lucy said to the quiet trees.

The last thing she needed was to give her exasperated self something else to worry about, but that new thought played on her mind.

“I can see the headlines now. Cheerleader with one foot, story at eleven,” she chuckled to herself.

“I must be going crazy. I’m laughing about cutting my foot off. I wonder what time it is?”

Lucy was not some outdoorsman who could tell the time by looking at the position of the sun. She was a cheerleader, not Davy Crockett.

“That’s why people wear watches and carry cell phones,” she thought, neither of which she had at the moment.

“My cell phone,” she said to the still quiet trees, “I miss my pink Blackberry.”

She knew that if she had the damned thing she would know the time. She could even listen to some music to occupy her mind to avoid thinking about gangrene and amputating her foot. Hell, she could call for help.

“Help would be good,” she said to the trees, but they didn’t answer her.

“Why hasn’t anyone come for me?” she questioned silently, “Didn’t my parents wonder where in the hell I was when I didn’t return home from the competition? Why didn’t my over-protective father send out the entire Glace Bay Police Department and half the RCMP to come find his daddy’s little girl? Where in the hell is everybody?”

Lucy couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d passed her cabin. She hadn’t gone in, figuring there was no point; there was nothing there and, thanks to Wade, she couldn’t even lock the door.

“Poor Wade,” she thought as images of his shattered face crept back into her memory. “At least he didn’t have to live through this horror.”

When Lucy breached the top of a blind crest, the road ended at a stop sign. The Seal Island Bridge was to the left, Cheticamp was to the right. The bridge was closed, and, if that cop wasn’t there, that meant a dead end. She could try to swim across the channel, but the way the current ran in and out from the Atlantic Ocean that wasn’t much of a choice. She might be pulled under and swept out to sea. She hadn’t come this far to drown.

Cheticamp was more or less the same distance away, but there was no way of knowing if anyone was there either.

If Michael’s theory was right and the problem started because something in that lab infected the water, then either direction should be protected by the mountains that surrounded Margaree.

“Water runs downhill, not up and over the next mountain,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “So both directions have about the same chances of being safe.”

Safe was such a relative term these days.

Kelly’s Mountain and Hunter’s Mountain would be hell to walk over, and Lucy was sick of mountains. The road to Cheticamp weaved through the valley and around the base of a mountain, then ran up along the coast.

“Cheticamp it is,” she announced to no one as she turned right but did not take a step.

“Distraction,” she announced with a smile. “Michael said something back at the lab about distracting them with smell.”

She looked at the road behind her as the zombies approached the foot of the blind crest.

“Let’s see if you fuckers are as dumb as you are ugly,” she said coldly.

She pulled off her sneaker and peeled the blood soaked sock bandage from her foot. The cuts had closed over and stopped bleeding. She winced in pain as she stomped her bare foot hard on the pavement, then hobbled down the road to the left. The road slapped and poked her tender foot without mercy as blood trickled, then poured, onto the hot pavement. She kept walking; more bloody footprints, more pain. She wiped some blood away with the sock and tossed it down the road, but it did not go very far. She tore off a piece of her shirt, sopped up some more blood and then wrapped it around a rock. She threw it as far as she could, but it didn’t go very far either.

“Jimmy Fastball Williams you’re not,” she said with a small laugh as she tore another piece of her shirt, soaked up some more blood and wrapped it around another rock.

She wound up like the baseball pitchers she’d watched on TV and let it fly. It passed her last attempt by only a few yards.

“Yep, you throw like a girl,” she muttered as she looked towards the zombies. They were getting close. Lucy hoped Michael had been right about their sight too.

She quickly tore one more strip off her shirt, which now barely covered her breasts, wrapped her foot again, shoved it back into her shoe and ran to the right.

Her plan was simple. If the zombies took the bait they would be walking away from her instead of constantly being on her ass. When she was a far enough distance away, she ducked into the trees to catch her breath and wait.

Time seemed to stand still. Then she saw it, the first one, the big one that was always ahead of the others, leading them forward. She didn’t think they were smart enough to have a leader. He probably just had longer legs, so that put him in front of everyone else. He stopped at the crossroads as the others came up behind him. Seconds ticked. She held her breath.

The zombies started to walk to the left. She almost squealed in excitement but muffled it back out of fear that they would hear her. It worked! All she had to do was wait for them to be out of sight and then run like hell.

It was a perfect plan.

“Thank you, Michael,” she whispered softly with a smile.

Her thoughts drifted back to Michael, how he had managed to stay calm through this crisis and figure things out, formulate plans, sacrifice himself. She felt a tiny tear trickle down her cheek.

They were all gone. She didn’t know if Paul had made it. He was big, strong, a football player, so chances were he made it, but the rest were dead.

Lucy allowed herself this brief moment to feel sad, to hurt.

As she mourned her friends the smell hit her nostrils a fraction too late as a putrid hand seemed to come out of nowhere and grab her shoulder. In a move that would have made her cheerleading coach proud, she leapt into the air in a ballet-like spin. The move broke her free from the monster’s grip, while adding a tremendous amount of torque to the hand that held her giant knife. Its long blade sliced into the zombie’s gaping mouth, the full strength of her spin causing the blade to easily sever the decomposing skull before digging into the tree behind it. The body fell limp, crashing to the ground, the top half of the head still perched on her blade. The eyes looked at her and almost seemed pitiful before the top of its head succumbed to gravity and fell to the ground with a thud.

Lucy yanked the blade from the tree and scanned for others; there were always others. She bolted onto the road in the direction of Cheticamp and suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Paul stood on the road in front of her.

It was Paul, but it was not her Paul. Not the Paul she had fallen in love with. Not even the Paul who had abandoned her and left her to die.

That Paul was dead, but so was this Paul. It wasn’t really him anymore Lucy tried to tell herself as he drew closer.

She raised the machete for the mighty blow that would finally end Paul’s existence, the blade dripping with the blackish-red blood from the decapitation just moments ago. She stood taut like a cat ready to strike its prey, prey that was walking straight for her.

Her determination faltered, her blade began to shake.

“Stop being squeamish,” she commanded herself. “It’s not Paul anymore. Just cut its damn head off and get out of here.”

She hesitated.

She knew she should not hesitate, but she couldn’t help herself.

It was still Paul after all.

She looked behind her. Her decoy had stopped working. Had they heard her? Had they heard the other zombie moan right before she cut off its head? Was Paul telling them she is here? She didn’t know, she just knew they were heading her way. She was trapped. She looked back to Paul.

“Can I really kill him? I have to.” She cried in desperation, “Please, God, help me!”

She looked behind her again. There were so many of them. She looked back to Paul, his massive frame now only a few feet away. She felt paralyzed.

“Paul, don’t!” she pleaded.

He stretched his arms around her, pulling her close to him.

“Paul, no!”

Tears raced down her cheeks. His head lowered, mouth opened.

“Paul!” she said one final time, then jammed the knife into his lower jaw until the hard steel sank deep into his skull.

He fell to his knees, his eyes still looking at her. She brushed his hair lovingly then wrenched the blade free. He fell sideways like a mighty tree crashing onto the hard pavement.

She stepped over his bulking frame and headed for Cheticamp.