Brandy Creek (Book Two Completed)

Part 3

Natalie

Two more days pass, Bjorn scouts out the small city while I eat and rest. He manages to find a few handguns, giving me some ammo for my own, sadly no big ammo. Bjorn had told me more info on the skin head group he had seen, they were just north of Brandy Creek. Far enough that they might not have noticed Brandy yet, but close enough for Bjorn to consider a threat. When he walks into the apartment with a fully charged expensive looking digital camera, I knew we would go and take pictures of the compound, and then we would go to Brandy. After finding new clothes and a car that wasn't super loud we packed it up and headed out.

My bite was healing like any other wound, my arm was still sore. My body was almost healed completely and I was getting stir crazy by the time we got into the car, and for three hours I worked up my excitement that I was actually going to be able to do something. Even if it was just recon work. Bjorn parks us near a lot of buildings, zombies surrounding the car.

Bjorn pops out and sprints for the small forest area between the little shops and houses, taking a chunk of the zombies with him. Some mill around the car, when I open the door they come lumbering towards me. I close the door and move past a few... but they weren't really interested in me.

A zombie that used to be a middle aged man sniffed the air between the car and me, then came closer. My hand palmed my knife on my belt, ready to kill him. I just didn't have to. I watched him sniff the air around me, walking in a uneven circle. Like he smelt food but wasn't sure where it was coming from. Reaching out I did something stupid, I shoved his arm with my hand. He reacted, by jerking around until he faced me, sniffed close to my face. Being so close I could see his grayed over eyes, the black veins spreading up his neck from under his t-shirt and how his ear was hanging on for its life. It seemed like he looked right through me, and all of the other zombies didn't seem to give a shit about me, other then walking around to smell the air.

Moving a step to the side, he just stays where I was. I move another step and another, slowly backing away from them. They didn't follow, they just.. sniffed the air of where I had been.

"Did you see that?" I ask Bjorn. He had killed all the zombies that had caught up with him, only using a knife. We didn't want the skin heads to hear gun shoots.

"I saw the end of it." He says nodding. "That could be very useful."

"If it sticks once the bite is healed." I say back. He starts off into the woods, I follow to his side, slightly behind. "But does that mean I'm contagious? Like if I bite someone hard enough to draw blood? Or have sex with someone?"

"If you have sex with a zombie do you turn into one?" He asks.

"I don't want to know." I shudder at the idea of someone trying. And with people in this world they probably would. "I was just thinking if the swapping of bodily fluids would do that."

"So would kissing do that?" He asks looking back at me.

He had a point, saliva of the dead in a open wound is what can turn a person. Would a sloppy kiss also be enough? What about sex? Or did it have to be directly into the blood stream? They were all valid questions that would have to be answered at some point. Because if this power of being able to walk by zombies without being attacked meant I couldn't have sex.. let alone kiss anyone again. I don't want it.

"It'll be a walk to get there." Bjorn says, telling me something I already knew. The camp he saw was on the other side of the city, we'd have to walk around it to get to it. We didn't want to be seen until we were ready to attack.