Welcome to the End

Chapter 26: Pitfalls

Kevin marched out the front doors, bow and arrow gripped tightly in his hands. He couldn't see anything that could have bothered Razor enough for the firing of the flare, but he trusted the survival instincts of the former scavenger. The clans were all about survival, so Razor wouldn't be the type to panic at something small. Whatever was wrong, it was something serious.

George lingered behind to assist Isabella, taking her pack to lighten the load she carried and increase her speed. He brought up the rear of the expedition, urging his people on to greater speed.

Kevin adopted the brisk pace of a slight jog. It was quick enough for the others to keep up, but it offered a slow enough velocity to allow enough time to stop if a threat were to appear in front of them. Truthfully, Kevin never expected it to come from all sides at once.

Taking a different route than the one they'd used coming in, Kevin had hoped to reduce the amount of time required to reach the boat. As he took a step, the ground under the leaves wasn't there to stop him, and Kevin lost his balance. The leaves covering the ground suddenly erupted around him, exploding into the air as the zombies underneath reached up to grab hold of him. He realized he was in a small hole filled with zombies.

Kevin had lost his bow in the stumble, and it rested on the ground out of reach. Reacting quickly, his training as a police officer kept him from hesitating despite being severely startled, and he pulled out his shotgun, dropping two zombies with a close range blast. They vanished back under the cover of the dead leaves.

A zombie on his right was about to lay hold of him when the entire side of its face exploded outward, spraying the corpse next to it in blood and brain matter. As the headless zombie fell over, the sound of a rifle shot reached Kevin's ears, and he knew Razor and Red had him covered.

George and the team attacked the zombies between them and Kevin, either shooting them or shattering their skulls with bats, clubs, and metal pipes.

Although the initial five zombies who'd ambushed Kevin had been put down, the leaves all across the orchard were beginning to stir. Kevin had no idea how much was of the movement was caused by the wind and how much was a result of zombies underneath. One thing he knew for certain was they couldn't wait around to find out.

"Move!" Kevin shouted.

The people who'd originally defended the orchard had dug pits across the landscape, hoping to trap the zombies inside. Although it'd worked, too many zombies had attacked for the holes to capture them all, and the zombies had reached the main building. As the seasons changed, the autumn leaves covered over the zombies trapped in the holes. The humans had wanted to stop the zombies, but they'd created the perfect ambush points.

Kevin understood why the animals hadn't returned. It was because the zombies had never left; they were still here, hidden everywhere around them.

A decayed arm, more skeleton than flesh, reached out from the base of a tree and snared Isabella by the ankle, causing her to trip. Her fall landed her near the edge of a zombie hole, and the living corpses inside were quick to grab hold of her in an attempt to pull her in with them. Larger and deeper than the hole Kevin had fallen into, the pit held far more zombies, and the depth put them out of the line of sight for Razor and Red on the ship, preventing them from helping.

Kevin and George heard Isabella fall and skidded to a stop, the loose carpeting of leaves almost causing them to lose their balance. They raced back to the pit and began firing. Headshots dropped one after another, but more than three dozen of the rotting dead existed in the hole; Kevin and George couldn't kill them fast enough. Isabella managed to fire her shotgun, but too many remained, and they fell upon her with savage abandon.