Day 347 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 7.3 - (1,730 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 7.3

Derek was not in any real danger in his mind, these were mindless automatons who reacted to sound and disturbances, his swearing had been loud enough to catch their attention, but there was a steep slope between him and them. It would be a long shambling walk for them to get to him even if it were a flat surface, but it was not and the steeper parts of the hill should keep them from ever getting to where he was.

If more than the fifty or so that had walked his way so far came over then there was a chance that a few of them would be pushed towards the road and come to the hill at an angle, and potentially find their way to the top, if their attention lasted that long. Derek was fairly sure that if he stayed silent they would give up soon enough and either rejoin the Zombies crowding the town or just mill about aimlessly adding to the pack between him and this mystery walled town.

The bigger concern was the town itself, it was walled, protected and there were watchtowers along the sides of the town that afforded them, some of the walls appeared to be buildings, the small town that was once just a handful of buildings had been fortified in a giant game of join the dots. There was no one watching the zombies crowding the bottom of the ridge, but if they stayed or tried to climb further would the residents of the town notice?

He needed a distraction, an audible one that would draw the undead away from his location, so that even if it were noticed that there was someone or something out here then they would not be looking in the right place.

He moved along the ridge as quietly as possible and into the edge of a copse of trees near the crest to look for a fallen log. His plan was to roll a log down the ridge, further to the south to make a fair amount of noise and to leave evidence of what the distraction was. That way if anyone was watching then they would see the undead crowding about a dead tree, fallen naturally to the ground and off the edge of the slope.

It was darkening into night, the twilight hours fading, when he found a good candidate and started to drag it towards the edge of the trees and to the sharp drop off where he was located, more of a cliff edge this far along and closer to the southern edge of the walled section. He could see the watchtower clearly as it got dark, as the light behind it lit the structure in silhouette. There was someone in it, moving about against the bright background, he could see the person manning it in profile, with a rifle clearly slung on his or her shoulders.

He examined the fallen section of a much larger tree and figured it’s size was about two thirds of his own. Dragging the log of this size would create too much noise and give away some of what he was trying to conceal.

Squatting he levered his arms under the fallen tree trunk and hoisted it up into his arms. The muscles burned and screamed in protest as he held it to his abdomen, the weight of it tipping him forwards.  The size of it and the distance to the edge was all of a sudden much further than he had thought seconds before, but he could not let go of the plan.

He took a step and his legs wobbled and strained as the center of gravity changed. Each painful and arduous step took at least thirty seconds to take and the few dozen feet he had to traverse felt like a marathon with no end in sight. The edge was still a long way away when his arms cramped and the pain blinded him, making him drop one arm reflexively. The log was too heavy for the remaining arm and the subsequent shift made the full weight of the fallen tree grate down his torso and legs, cracking his shins and feet painfully.

A silent scream echoed in his ears and the pain brought tears and blood to him in the small wooded area. He could not make a sound though, his life depended on it, and he was an immense amount of pain writhing in the leaves, trying to minimize his movements unsuccessfully, and silent sobs wracking his chest, deep breaths of the air that burned each inch of his lungs inside. The pounding pain in his head was back and all the sensory reactions from the car accident were suddenly back with him, along with the new pains and wounds.

“Clack!” a harsh and plastic sound came through the woods and then a beam of light swung through the woods where he was. The trees and bushes were illuminated; the brightness of the spotlight was too much to handle, not like sunlight at all. More like waking up in a mall, fluorescent light unnatural and all too white.

He was lying flat on his side, hugging the ground, curled into a ball and covered in the foliage and branches from writing about in them, naturally camouflaged in his painful twisting. 

The spotlight did not hesitate and kept sweeping across the area looking for a sign of life stirring in trees. It soon obliged and a small group of birds, which had been sleeping peacefully, were disturbed by the sudden harsh light and took to flight. They hooted and flew through the trees looking for new and less bright surroundings, causing the light to follow them more and draw attention away from where Derek was still curled up.

He lay there for a while longer, letting the pain settle down and subside as much as he could. It could have been five minutes ort an hour later when he moved again. The twilight dusk had passed into complete night now and the moon was low on the horizon, some light making it through the woods to where he was, but too dark for him to move freely without tripping.

He could not see his wounds, but he could feel the tacky sensation of drying blood on his right leg, through the rents in his jeans where the rough log had torn through to skin.

Derek inched his way in a crouch, towards the edge of the wood and to see what was going on in the watchtower. A sudden beam of light washed over the area he was standing in, illuminating everything for a half second and then moving on to scans further south.

He had not been seen but they were still looking for the cause of the disturbance with the undead.

A tree thick and knotted was leaning out from the steepest part of the drop off and provided some cover for Derek to look out over the edge to the fortifications. The trunk of it moved, dipped dangerously loose when he leaned on it and he knew that with a bit of effort he could dislodge the entire thing and send it cascading down the hillside.

He waited silently, patiently riding out the pain and throbbing noises in his head until the spotlight made another sweep and then passed him by one more time.

When it was at it’s furthest from him, he started putting as much weight as he could on the tree, trying to find the tipping point where it would give up it’s hold on the earth around it’s roots and fall down.

“Clack!” the spotlight clicked off and the solid darkness returned, only the dim moon still not high enough in the sky providing any illumination.

He balanced his weight as far along the tree as he dared, still leaving enough distance for him to jump to safety if it suddenly gave. He jumped up and slammed down on the trunk, feeling it shudder nervously under the violent movement, causing much less sound than he thought but sending bolts of lightning through his injured legs.

On the fourth repetition of the jumping there was sudden change in gravity and Derek felt the loosened earth giving up whatever hold it had left on the roots and the tree succumbing to gravity while he was still on it.

No time to think he leapt out as far and as high as he could, arms flailing for purchase and finding another tree that took his weight and the thunderous noise of the tree pulling earth and branches over the cliff’s edge made an o=unholy racket in the still night.

He scrabbled to find a foot hold but was holding on with his screaming arms only, his entire weight pulling him down as he tried to find a place to put his feet, realizing he was essentially suspended in mid air, hanging off of an extended branch above the cliff edge of this ridge.

“Clack!” the spotlight snapped on and zeroed into the area, finding the landslide caused by the tree’s exodus and following it down the hillside, tracking it all the way to the gathered undead that it had crushed on it’s landing at the bottom.

Swinging free in mid air Derek could see the crushed zombies, some still trying to move, uselessly trapped legs under the heavy and unforgiving trunk he had sent to the ground. The spotlight stayed on the ground for a while and then tracked back up the path of destruction, the narrow beam of it’s light passing Derek by only a few feet but not sharing any of it’s light on him.

Derek waited, his legs dangling and his shoulders protesting but locked into painful place in mid air. When the spotlight clacked off for the last time he swung himself up into the branches and climbed his way back down the substantial limbs and back on to solid ground again.

He found cover, behind a tree and in a small depression that would hide him if the spotlight came back to examine the area once more.

It did not and he eventually fell asleep there, covered in leaves and under the watchful gaze of the birds who had come to their roosts again now that the light had gone.