Kenn Crawford - Dead Hunt

She walked for hours, trying to ignore the chilly air and pushing past the pain of sharp rocks digging into her shoeless foot.

She struggled forward, and morning finally broke.

Lucy quickly rummaged through the bags trying not to look at Wade’s corpse. She found a bottle of water and took a long drink. It was disgustingly warm, almost hot, but it quenched her agonizing thirst. She poured some over her head as if trying to wash away the stench, then took another long, powerful gulp.

The water trickled down her face like tears, but she didn't have time to cry. She wanted to, she just didn't have time. She rifled through some more bags and found a pair of running shoes, socks, a t-shirt and more of the sun-roasted water. She grabbed her cache then stepped outside to escape the stench that burned in her nostrils.

Lucy lowered herself to the ground and gritted her teeth in pain as she peeled the blood-soaked sock from her battered foot. She took a deep breath and poured water over her wounds. Without taking the time to let the pain subside, she used one of the socks as a makeshift bandage to wrap her battered and blistered foot.

She picked up her trusted machete, and her lightly-freckled nose crinkled as she gave the mob a defiant stare. Empty, emotionless eyes stared back at her. The corner of Lucy's lip curled in disgust as she turned her back to them and started to jog.

Pain shot through her foot with a jolt, and her thighs begged for mercy. She had only taken a few steps before slowing to a fast walk. She may have been an athlete, but all this running around and lack of sleep was taking its toll on her petite body. That’s when she heard it. Her heart jumped in disbelief. It couldn’t be. She listened intently. There it was again; a ringing sound.

“My cell phone!” Lucy cried out excitedly as she spun around towards the van. In her desperation to find water her exhausted mind had completely forgotten that her cell phone sat waiting in the side pocket of her duffle bag. And, it was ringing! That meant there was a signal. That meant she could call for help! She was rescued!

Lucy took a few excited steps towards the van, ignoring her screaming foot, then froze in her tracks. Her heart sank.

Rescue was not within her grasp. Something stood between her and rescue: the zombies.

They had already reached the van. Most of them just staggered past it towards Lucy, but a few stragglers still hung around the vehicle, attracted to the stench of death. Lucy slowly walked backwards, her eyes darting side to side taking in her surroundings as her exhausted mind raced through possibilities.

“Double-back through the woods,” she thought excitedly. “No, that won’t work,” she corrected herself. “The zombies in the van might not leave, and then I’ll be surrounded.”

Her hand clenched the machete handle. “Kill the fuckers. Kill every last one of them!”

“There’s too many,” the other side of her brain told her. A war raged inside her mind: her emotions and intellect battled for dominance.

Intellect won.

It was hopeless. Help was perhaps just a phone call away, but it was a call she was not going to be making. A loud crack jolted her mind back to the task at hand. She looked from side to side for the source of the sound but saw nothing. She felt something tapping the top of her head. She looked up as tiny droplets of water kissed her face. The intensity increased abruptly as a heavy rain blew in. Moments later she was as wet as a trout.

She laughed sardonically. “Figures.”

And, like so many times before, Lucy turned her back on the approaching mob and walked away, leaving her cell phone, and her last hope of rescue, behind.

Her laughter turned to sobs which shook her body. Tears flowed hot down her cheeks and melded with the cold rain. Her mind raced through recent memories, memories of her friends, of their happy, smiling faces. Those visions were replaced with the horror of watching those same faces screaming as their young flesh was being ripped apart by monsters.

She limped forward in the chilling downpour, her determination resolute. She was getting off this mountain.

She walked on and on and had no way of knowing exactly how long she had been moving but knew it must have been at least a few hours. The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, nothing more than a brief sun shower. Lucy thought God must be mocking her, as the summer heat had returned in all its blistering glory. Her foot didn’t hurt as much, or perhaps it had just gone completely numb. Lucy wasn’t quite sure which, but at least the pain had subsided a little.

“With my luck, I’ll get gangrene and they’ll have to amputate,” Lucy said to the quiet trees.

The last thing she needed was to give her exasperated self something else to worry about, but that new thought played on her mind.

“I can see the headlines now. Cheerleader with one foot, story at eleven,” she chuckled to herself.

“I must be going crazy. I’m laughing about cutting my foot off. I wonder what time it is?”

Lucy was not some outdoorsman who could tell the time by looking at the position of the sun. She was a cheerleader, not Davy Crockett.

“That’s why people wear watches and carry cell phones,” she thought, neither of which she had at the moment.

“My cell phone,” she said to the still quiet trees, “I miss my pink Blackberry.”

She knew that if she had the damned thing she would know the time. She could even listen to some music to occupy her mind to avoid thinking about gangrene and amputating her foot. Hell, she could call for help.

“Help would be good,” she said to the trees, but they didn’t answer her.

“Why hasn’t anyone come for me?” she questioned silently, “Didn’t my parents wonder where in the hell I was when I didn’t return home from the competition? Why didn’t my over-protective father send out the entire Glace Bay Police Department and half the RCMP to come find his daddy’s little girl? Where in the hell is everybody?”

Lucy couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d passed her cabin. She hadn’t gone in, figuring there was no point; there was nothing there and, thanks to Wade, she couldn’t even lock the door.

“Poor Wade,” she thought as images of his shattered face crept back into her memory. “At least he didn’t have to live through this horror.”

When Lucy breached the top of a blind crest, the road ended at a stop sign. The Seal Island Bridge was to the left, Cheticamp was to the right. The bridge was closed, and, if that cop wasn’t there, that meant a dead end. She could try to swim across the channel, but the way the current ran in and out from the Atlantic Ocean that wasn’t much of a choice. She might be pulled under and swept out to sea. She hadn’t come this far to drown.

Cheticamp was more or less the same distance away, but there was no way of knowing if anyone was there either.

If Michael’s theory was right and the problem started because something in that lab infected the water, then either direction should be protected by the mountains that surrounded Margaree.

“Water runs downhill, not up and over the next mountain,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “So both directions have about the same chances of being safe.”

Safe was such a relative term these days.

Kelly’s Mountain and Hunter’s Mountain would be hell to walk over, and Lucy was sick of mountains. The road to Cheticamp weaved through the valley and around the base of a mountain, then ran up along the coast.

“Cheticamp it is,” she announced to no one as she turned right but did not take a step.