Another Zombie Apocalypse Tale: Part 9

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Three Weeks and Two Days Since the Apocalypse

Gaping at the poor girl, I waited for some sign that this was a trick. That she was actually one of the dead, and the adrenaline from my jump made me think I had heard a plea for help.

The little girl shivered and she cried out, “Please help me,” before she fell back with a soft thud.

She was alive, for now. I had to get down there.

“What the hell, Beckett?” Marianne’s voice cut through the horror-struck silence, making me jump.

I looked up to see the Black woman marching toward Beckett, holding the baseball bat in one hand, looking like she wanted to whack him with it. Following behind her was Elsie, Amber/Kimber, Erik—who had a swollen black eye, and cracked glasses—and my attacker. Their hood was pulled up and their shoulders hunched as they were dragged along with the group. Beckett didn’t take his eyes off the little girl. Elsie stared across the open-air expanse at me.

“Shit, how did you—Did you jump?” Her eyebrows shot up, pulling at the scar on the side of her face.

Amber/Kimber let out a low whistle. “That’s got to be, like, eighteen feet.”

“We have a different issue,” Beckett grunted and pointed down to the little girl. Each person let out their own curse or swear of surprise.

“Is she still alive,” Erik asked, his tone was incredulous and bordered with disinterest. He carefully touched his bruised eye, then adjusted his glasses.

“Yep.” Beckett shrugged off his backpack and dropped it down below. It hit with a muted thump.

He walked back down the bridge, much like I had, to get a running start—although I don’t think he counted his paces. My hands curled into fists, my palms slick with sweat. Is he doing what I think he’s doing? The others watched him with their brows pinched.

Amber/Kimber asked him, “What on earth are you doing?”

He took off sprinting toward the edge. I sucked in a breath. He jumped. My eyes widened as his arms flailed, his bulky frame flew over the open space. He hit the ground, letting his knees give out so he could roll. Not the over the shoulder, special forces tactical roll, but side over side, bouncing against the pavement with a horrible crunching sound. When he came to a stop, he propped up on his elbow with a grimace. A painful look that deepened as he got to his feet.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Marianne threw her free hand up in defeat. She spun on Erik, who flinched away but glared at her with his one good eye. “I blame you for this,” she said, jabbing her finger at him.

Beckett turned to me, patting himself down gingerly before brushing dust and gravel from his tattooed arms. “Let’s go help that little girl.”

I gave a single nod and jumped into action. Going down the embankment was much easier than climbing up it. Beckett and I slid down and picked our way through the chunks of cement.

I drew in a sharp breath when the little girl came into full view. One of her legs was twisted at a horrible angle below her knee. The white of bone protruded from bloody, torn flesh. She had a hand clamped over her mouth to muffle her cries. Her eyelids were scrunched shut.

“Hey,” I said softly

The girl started, her entire body tensing, which caused her to cry out in pain. The sound muffled by her hand clutching her face. Fresh tears ran down the sides of her cheeks. Murmuring an apology, I knelt next to her as Beckett walked past us to retrieve his pack. The little girl reached out a bloodied hand, and I took it, scanning her arms for bite marks.

Nothing on her arms or neck. I asked her if she’d been bit, and her chin trembled as she let out an almost silent, “Yes.”

“Where?”

“Ankle.” Snot ran from her nose, joining the continuous stream of tears.

Dread already prepping me for the worst, I pulled up the cuff of her pants. “Oh.”

More than once she’d been bitten. I counted three bites, the crescent shaped scars healing red against her ashen skin. They were as old as my own bite mark scars.

“Do you have any fresh bites?”

“No.” Her voice was weak, just audible over the slight ringing in my ears.

At the crunch of boots approaching, I covered her bites, hoping she truly didn’t have any more. My mind was reeling. She was like me. She didn’t turn rabid, die, then come back like everyone else did when they were bitten, and I needed to protect her from these people. A burning rage ignited in my chest as I thought of them throwing her into a room to defend herself against the dead as they had with me.

I looked up at Beckett as he sidled up to me with his pack. The little girl’s hand was still in mine, her grip tightened at his appearance.

“What are you going to do,” I asked as he knelt by the girl’s twisted leg, his hands hovered over the protruding, blood streaked shin bone.

He gave his head a slight shake, air hissing out between his teeth, then he looked up at the bridge where the others stared down at us.

“Elsie, we need you.”

The woman swore and shrugged off her pack. There was a muffled discussion between her, Marianne, and Erik. Amber/Kimber continued to watch us with a blank face. When the conversation became heated as Erik raised his voice, she pulled away and snapped at him.

“Give them the damn medicine, don’t be a fascist.”

I smiled a little. I needed to remember her actual name.

Elsie dropped her pack down, but kept her sword. A few moments later, she ran and jumped, clearing the distance easily.

Marianne immediately called after her, “Are you good, Elle?”

“Si, señorita.”

Beckett shifted, scanning our surroundings. “Could you…” His voice trailed off as his gaze fell on the little girl’s hand clenching mine. “Never mind. Eyes open, Cami.” He got to his feet and collected Elsie’s pack, setting it next to me while he dug through it.

We both looked up at the sound of scattering and skittering gravel. Elsie was descending the embankment. Once she approached us, she batted Beckett’s hands out of her pack, muttering about him messing up the organization of the supplies.

The little girl still had her eyes clenched shut. I reached up to brush her hair from her forehead. The dark locks were sticky with sweat and caked with wet dust. She flinched and peeked at me through wet eyelashes.

“Sorry. I’m Camille,” I said, continuing to smooth her hair from her face. “This is Beckett, and that’s Elsie. What’s your name?”

Her chin quivered. “My name is Myra.”

“Alright, Myra,” Beckett said, his voice soft and gentle. “What we’re going to do is really going to hurt a lot. You’ve been so brave already, but we need you to keep being brave. Can you do that?”

“Do I have a choice?” Her comment was sarcastic even as her chin trembled again, and more tears ran down her face. A snot bubble formed on her left nostril, before being sucked back into her nose as she inhaled.

“We better hurry,” Elsie said, gesturing with her head and looking past me.

With a glance over my shoulder, I found myself squeezing Myra's hand a little tighter as I watched a dead woman stumble over debris, dragging her own twisted leg along the ground. Her glossed-over eyes targeted us and a hungry, gravelly moan pushed past rotten lips wriggling with maggots. Beyond her, two more dead were lumbering their way over to us.

They were likely stragglers from the horde on the other side of the bridge.

“Camille, you keep a look out, okay? I’m going to need Beckett to help hold Myra still.” She looked at the little girl, who nodded her head in agreement with the woman. “This is going to hurt.”

“Just do it,” Myra said, releasing my hand and clutched her own hands together, her knuckles white and blood red.

With my ears ringing, as if I developed tinnitus in the last ten minutes, I watched Elsie as she prepped the supplies for the splint. Wood stakes, gauze, and medical tape. Gripping my machete tight, I turned to observe our surroundings. The dead lumbered closer.

“Bite down on this,” Beckett said to Myra.

I took a few steps away, bracing myself for the sounds of torment that would ensue when they set the bone. I rubbed a hand against my thigh, grimacing. Waiting. Watching. The dead woman’s teeth were chattering, hungry. Decay and dust hung in the still air.

“Ready?” I heard Elsie ask, I didn’t catch a reply from Beckett or Myra.

There was a quick inhale of breath, then a scream. A muffled, teeth clenched scream. My insides squirmed as the imagery of why that scream was happening played in my head. Flashes of the little girl, the bites on her ankle, were replaced with flashes of my teammate who’d broken her leg while we and two other teammates and our coach fled from the track when the dead swarmed the meet.

Funny how a scream can transport you back to the beginning…