Dead Soil: A Zombie Series by Alex Apostol Page B

up onto all fours. Her ribs felt like the bones had been pulverized to dust. Her face didn’t feel like it was hers anymore, or she wished it wasn’t with how badly it throbbed and stung. She started to sob, but each intake of air felt like it was ripping apart the muscles inside her stomach. Spit and blood fell from her mouth onto the dirt trail. Slowly, she raised herself to her feet, but was unable to stand upright.
    Hunched and holding her waist, she shuffled back into the woods before the men returned with reenforcement. She dropped to her knees in a cluster of thick bushes about a half a mile away. Edging her way in so the braches didn’t scratch her already bruised and beaten body, she immersed herself and then collapsed to the ground. Everything went dark.
     
     
    When the sun shone through the trees and onto her face, Anita awoke with a start. She sat up. Immediately, her head pounded something fierce, as if she had been beating it against a tree trunk all night. She took in a sharp breath through her teeth and raised a hand to her head. It hovered over her muddied, strawberry-blonde hair rather than touch it directly.
    The rhythmic thumping of footsteps in the distance made its way closer to where Anita sat. When the sound finally separated itself from the pounding of her head, Anita held her breath. Her lungs ached the longer she kept it in. Was it an animal? Was it one of the infected? Or was it more people? That last thought made tears rush to her eyes. She choked them back before she broke into a full on sob again. Her ribs wouldn’t be able to handle it.
    She could distinguish multiple footsteps and heard faint voices talking to each other. It was people. Her stomach dropped. They were practically on top of her, just a few short feet away as they walked the trail. She lowered her hand from her head to slowly cover her mouth. Coated in dirt, she pressed it against her busted lip which gave a sharp sting. She winced. With enormous eyes, she watched through the leaves as a group of six walked past her. They were too busy arguing to notice she was there. Anita shrank back further into the bushes.
     
     
     
    II.
     
     
    Four guys and two women walked together in a loosely knit group along the trail. The sun was fully in the sky and it brought the relentless heat of an Indiana summer. Before the outbreak, the news had reported it as one of the hottest summers in forty-three years, and it was only the end of June.
    Lonnie Lands carried a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle in both of his thick, small hands, the barrel pointed out in front of him. He kept his stocky body crouched, knees bent, as he swept the woods. “I’m just sayin’,” he said loud enough to echo off the trees. “Every group needs a leader and it should be me. I’m in the Army and I know how to take apart and reassemble this rifle with my eyes closed in under a minute. Everything I did for the Army is top secret, so I can’t really talk about it, in case they actually clean this shit storm up and I return to…well I can’t say, but I can say that I’ve seen some shit and done some shit and it ain’t pretty.”
    Gale Lewis rolled her narrow brown eyes. She was a few paces behind the majority of the group and with every step they took they got further away from her, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t listen to Lonnie go on about his supposed job in the Army. It was all bullshit. The way he was holding his gun made Gale laugh, like he was Rambo.
    When Gale walked she leaned side to side, unable to put too much pressure on either foot since they both throbbed from endless walking. It was Lonnie’s idea not to stay in one place too long and as a result she’d only sat down collectively for thirty minutes in the last twenty-four hours. Never mind that she was approaching her mid-fifties while he was barely the legal drinking age.
    “You alive back there, Big Bertha?” Lonnie called to Gale every so often. It was an unclever jab