Wild For You

Chapter 4

    It's been two hours. No change in traffic, not a single car has moved an inch. The honking stopped as people began to get out and walk. The street and sidewalk out front were flooded with people. Where will they all go?

"We gotta hurry, dude." Tyler gasped.

He curled up between the desk and bed, trying to tough it through an anxiety attack. He was gripping the drawstrings on his bag and pulling them as tight as they could go, almost until they snapped. Yeah, sure. I'm the one lagging.

We planned to go out the back and head through the woods, opposite the people trying to escape. Then we would turn out towards the lake, a good three miles away from the edge of the town we were in. David said he would meet us there with our friend Craig and Lui. After camping for a day or two and gathering supplies we would head to Tennessee to look for help.

I rubbed his hair, picking up my last bag. "I'm comin,' I'm a comin.' You sure the dogs will be quiet? I'm pretty sure I've seen people getting mauled for supplies, we don't, we don't need to get caught."

He nodded, took a deep breath, and stood up. "Yeah. I hope. Archie is a good boy but Kino is so excited, I dunno about him."

Kino groaned and bounced at the sound of his name, struggling a bit on the leash.

"I hope hoping is enough," I sighed.

Tyler stood up and stretched, shaking out his long limbs. "Let's move out, nerd."

He hid his fear behind confidence well, if I hadn't known any better I would have thought he'd done this before. We left, creeping out the back door of the motel. I rushed forward to crouch behind some dumpsters, peeking out at the herd of people. They seemed normal and no one was looking our way. The air was colder and more unforgiving than usual, I shivered so hard it threw me off balance. It was eerily quiet. Not a sound came from the main road. I could hear my heart pumping adrenaline through my veins.

Suddenly, shrieking. Tyler and I whipped around to see a man pinned by a zombie that sank its sharp teeth into his neck. A woman near them was screaming; she leaned on the brick wall behind her while her legs gave out, sinking down and hiding behind her forearms. The zombie crouched back from the man, ribbons of flesh hanging from his mouth.

He didn't even look like a zombie. He was ghostly white and his pupils were wide like he was tweaked out of his mind. Other than that he looked normal, minus the blood on his front. There were retching sounds from my right. Tyler had moved beside me, kneeling and holding his hand over his mouth.

"Shh!" I whispered, "Don't puke now, c'mon. Don't be- don't make any sound."

The zombie went after the woman, chasing her off in the direction of everyone else. Chaos erupted from the main road but no one ran this way. I stood and stepped over Tyler, getting a good look at the dead man's body.

I vomited at the sight of it. His neck was ripped open, leaving a gaping wound that trailed down his chest and stopped at the bottom of his ribcage. His head twisted in a direction that shouldn't be possible. Kino and Archie were growling and pulling at their leashes. The dead man sat upright abruptly. I froze. He glared at me, waiting for a reason to lunge. From behind the cover, Tyler was holding up a bed post we had stolen from the motel, ready to swing. Kino barked and the zombie came racing at me. I screamed and fell, closing my eyes as tight as they would go. I could feel blood from the zombie's wound drip down onto my head and chest. The dog leashes tore from my grasp.

A loud CRACK! echoed through the valley. I opened my eyes just in time to see the zombie stumble as his head went flying. The corpse went down like a sack of bricks at Tyler's feet.

"Oh my- oh my God!" I screamed. "Oh my God, oh my God!"

Tyler was breathing heavily with his eyebrows furred. He nudged the corpse away with his foot and dropped the bedpost.

"Are you alright, Jonathan? Holy, holy fuck. He- he didn't bite you, did he?"

I shook my head no. Archie whimpered from behind the dumpster, Kino had run off when I dropped his leash. Tyler helped me get into cover where we collapsed, piled up on each other. Tyler was leaning on the little half wall behind him with one leg bent. I pressed hard into his chest, listening to his heart drumming like a bat out of hell. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck were standing up as if I were electrified.