Page 86 of Grave Danger

But there was no help to be found. Demetrius went down on his back, his feet splashing into the creek. Two zombies crawled up the muddy bank, one of them, a woman, held tight to his ankle. With a shout, he kicked at the woman’s face. The sole of his shoe connected, and the snapping of her nose and, possibly, jaw made his stomach clutch. He started a mantra in his mind—she’s not living, she’s not living, she’s not living—and kicked again. This time her fingers loosened enough for him to pull free, and he crabwalked back from the creek, through the mud and wet leaves until he had room to get to his feet.

That was when he realized more zombies had been approaching across the field, coming toward them from the farms and boxing them in. Oliver, Dave, and Agatha were backing toward him. Dave had grabbed a long branch he used as a makeshift spear, keeping them back with short, quick jabs at their midsections.

“The head,” Cody said. “Stab them in the head.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dave shouted without looking around. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Want to get eaten alive?” Cody said.

“Fuck!”

Dave raised his aim and shouted as he speared a zombie in the head. The zombie collapsed, pulling the branch from his hands.

“Fuck!” Dave shouted again.

They formed a tight group, keeping their backs to each other. When a zombie approached, they kicked out or shoved it away.

“To the creek,” Oliver suggested. “The higher water might keep them unsteady.”

“And us as well,” Agatha said.

“Better than this,” Cody said.

They waded into the creek, the water past Demetrius’s waist and so cold it momentarily stole his breath. The current was strong, tugging at their legs, and the few zombies that followed them in lost their footing and were swept downstream. Demetrius had to fight the instinct that arose to try and save them. There was no saving them any longer.

“Definitely going to be a lot of shrinkage from this,” Cody said.

Despite everything, Demetrius snorted a laugh. “You’re impossible.”

“Impossible to resist.”

“That, too.”

They waded carefully upstream, the rain drenching them from above as the freezing water numbed their lower bodies. In a short amount of time, they passed from farmland into another thick patch of woods. The bank rose on either side of them, and trees crowded right up to the edge of the earth, roots protruding down into the creek. It looked to Demetrius as if the trees had been so thirsty they’d decided to get their water directly from the source.

“We should be getting close to the lab,” Agatha said, looking over her shoulder past Demetrius and Cody. “And we’ve got quite a following to take right to their doorstep.”

Demetrius looked back and swore. The number of their pursuers had doubled in size, again. And those were just the ones following them through the water. More had to be moving through the trees above them as well.

“Where are they all coming from?” Demetrius said.

“Hey, there’s something up here,” Dave called. “A pipe or something.”

“I say it was Dr. Tisdale, with the lead pipe, in the mad scientist laboratory,” Cody said. When Agatha shot him a dirty look over her shoulder, he cleared his throat and said, “Sorry. Too soon?”

“It’s a runoff pipe of some kind,” Oliver said. “And it’s really working overtime.”

“I think we should get out of the creek now,” Dave said.

Agatha, Demetrius, and Cody came up beside Oliver and Dave. A corrugated metal pipe with a diameter of roughly three feet stuck out of the bank of earth, spewing water into the creek. Demetrius looked above the pipe and noticed the trees with roots close to the pipe had many more new branch shoots sprouting from their trunks than the trees farther back in the woods.

“I think we’ve found the lab,” Demetrius said.

“And we’re standing here waist deep in its sewage,” Cody said.

“And possibly a lot worse,” Dave said. “Who knows what they’re flushing away in that place.”

“Goddamn him,” Agatha said with a low growl in her voice. “Such a selfish bastard.”