The Roaming (Book 2): The Toll

  Undead littered the pier as Miller and Cortez sprinted its length side by side to the final boat. The end of the pier reached, neither man hesitated before jumping into the water far below. Blackness surrounded Miller. He was weightless for the briefest of moments before swimming to the surface. Cortez was already being helped aboard.

  The boat’s pilot chastised Cortez. “You stupid fuck, I almost left you. They’re going to be pissed you broke protocol.”

  “I made a call. They’re going to have to deal with it. Just get us out of here.” Cortez reached out a hand for Miller.

  An infected latched onto Rachel’s calf, biting deep. A third of the muscle was removed before she could spin around and kick the ghoul in its face, shattering its nose and busting most of its teeth. Lying on its back, undaunted by its shattered mouth, the creature continued to chew on its meal. Pieces of Rachel’s calf leaked from the thing’s greedy maw and landed on the sand. The monster, momentarily contented, gave the wounded soldier a brief chance at escape. Rachel limped to her feet in a vain attempt to reach the pier. From her vantage point, she had no way of knowing if her boat, the last boat to safety, was gone.

  Limping toward the pier, Rachel fired into the approaching horde. Two more fell as she used the last of her bullets. She threw her empty gun at another, missing completely. Desperate, she unsheathed her knife and jumped onto another carrier to bury the blade into its skull. The creature fell, and she rode him down to the pier’s hard surface. Rachel tried to get up but collapsed. Her leg was ruined. It didn’t work at all. The impact sent her knife skidding across the boards and into the water. Reduced to crawling on all fours, Rachel slowly made her way down the pier. She wasn’t about to give up, not after coming this far. Miller would make the boat wait for her. She was sure of it. Nearly to the pier’s edge, she saw it. The boat was gone. She watched it grow smaller in the distance. Delirious, she decided to lie at the end of the dock and wait for Miller to come back.

  Barely conscious, Rachel hardly noticed as a group of five carriers ripped away her pack and most of her shirt, exposing soft, warm flesh. The first carrier bit into her stomach. Two more fought over the same leg, tearing fist-sized chunks of meat away from bone in the struggle. Three more joined in, ravaging her chest and neck. The pier was swarming with undead in a matter of moments. More than two dozen infected vied for a place of their own. As new carriers joined the fray, others were forced off the dock into the waters below. The mass clawed and scratched, ripped and tore, desperately trying not to lose their spot in line. A large portion of Rachel’s entrails went over the side with a careless carrier’s misplaced footing. Her intestines, still attached somewhere inside her torso, dangled from her body to the water. Her right arm came off at the elbow. It violently passed from hand to hand until it was cleaned of all flesh, then discarded. The bone was kicked back and forth around the pier until it fell beneath the water below.

  A small, child-sized carrier gnawed ferociously on Rachel’s remaining hand. Warm fluids still pumped out onto the already drenched pier. Her limb chewed to the bone, the greedy creature made its way up her arm. Rachel was semiconscious as yet another fiend pulled her bottom lip from her face. In her state of shock, the myriad wounds felt warm. Rachel imagined she was in a hot tub, soothing water flowing over her exhausted body. Ryan was sitting next to her in the pool and smiling. It was so relaxing she wanted to take a nap. Only for a moment, though. “I need to rest my eyes, Ryan. Just for a few minutes.”

  Miller watched helplessly as the expanse grew and throngs of infected ravaged and consumed Rachel. In minutes, she was buried by them, each one trying desperately for its share of their hard-earned spoils. Miller dared not blink, lest he miss her fade from sight. He would watch her for as long as he was able. He owed her that much. His thoughts drifted to Soraya and the image of her sharing a similar fate, hundreds of filthy hands clawing at her delicate tanned skin, rending her limb from limb.

  Miller remained silent, watching Rachel’s overwhelmed silhouette grow smaller. At this point, he couldn’t help but wonder if Radzinski had been right all along: maybe they should have ignored Pepperbush in the first place. It began with Takashi and the others. Now Soraya and finally Rachel were gone, too. He wondered how long the needs of the many would outweigh his own feelings. For the first time since their journey began, an anger swelled inside him.

  The shoreline of Poseidon’s Rest grew small in the distance. He strained to locate the hotel they came from as a fog began blocking out the horizon. Barely visible, the Blue Oasis stood as a gravestone, a testament to this journey’s steep toll. Miller lost track of how many days it had been since he touched down in Philadelphia. Too many. For the first time since he was tasked with the burden of leadership, the future for what remained of his unit and the survivors of Pepperbush was in someone else’s hands.

  The Roaming

  Haven’s Promise

  Book III

  Coming

  Winter 2020