Murk
Ramirez took a deep breath as birds chirped and the morning light dappled the mossy forest floor. “It really is pretty,” she murmured to no one in particular. It was easy to forget how beautiful things could be, when you were always worried about something taking a bite out of you. She only wished Frieda was with her to share it. Pushing the thought aside, she adjusted the strap on her backpack and ducked beneath a low hanging branch as she and the others followed Labrand along the narrow path.
The trail had gotten so steep that sometimes they had to bend double, using exposed roots and rocks as handholds. In other spots, they had to risk free-climbing, which brought its own headaches – the rocks were flat and slick, damp with morning dew. The trees were getting shorter as well. There were no trail markers to be seen, either.
The night had passed without incident. She’d slept badly, but that was par for the course these days. Everything ached. She’d thought she was in good condition, but her feet and back were saying otherwise. She was looking forward to reaching the summit. From there on in, they’d be going down rather than climbing up. But, unfortunately, that relief was still several hours of hiking away.
She tried not to think about the lodge as she walked. About what might have happened after they’d left. More, she tried not to think about what might have happened if they’d stayed. Would it have mattered? Maybe they could have done something – saved the camp. She shook her head, trying to banish the thoughts. They had a job to do, and she intended to see it done. One way or another.
It was colder up here. She’d read somewhere that every thousand feet of elevation in the Adirondacks was the equivalent, temperature-wise, of driving five hundred miles north. The higher you went, the colder it got, with some exceptions.
They hit one of those exceptions a few minutes after the thought occurred to her. They entered a cut in the mountain – two steep walls of rock that rose along the slope of the mountain. The trail went along the top of the narrow scree that ran up through the cleft. It was full of fallen skinny pines and leafy, obscuring ferns.
The air was almost humid in this isolated pocket, and as Ramirez scanned the heights she felt a sudden prickle of unease. She stopped, gesturing for the others to do the same. Then she whistled for Labrand. He turned, one hand on a tree. “What is it?” he called back.
“Look around,” she said. “What do you think?”
Labrand tipped back the brim of his hat and looked up. He frowned. “Ambush?” Even as he asked the question, the answer came in the form of a gunshot. His Stetson was sent flying, and Labrand ducked around the closest tree for cover.
Ramirez dropped low, hunkering in the lee of a fallen tree. As the echo of the shot faded, the others sought what cover they could find. Westlake, halfway down the scree, shouted, “Where is she?”
“Above us,” Ramirez answered. She peered around the edge of her tree, but saw no telltale glint to mark the shooter’s position. Sayers was smarter than that. “Somewhere, anyway,” she muttered. Her fingers tapped at the holstered shape of her pistol. After a moment’s hesitation, she drew it. She felt better with the weapon in her hand, even if she couldn’t see her target.
“So what do we do about it?” Hutch bawled. He huddled down as a shot plucked at the branches above his head, showering him with pine needles. He covered his head with his hands and gave a muffled curse.
Ramirez had no answer for him – not a good one, at least. Sayers had the high ground, and if they hunkered down for too long, the walkers would catch up with them. If they made a run for it, they’d make themselves targets. “Can anyone see anything?” she called. “Calavera, Westlake, anybody?”
Westlake gave a sour laugh. “If I could see her, I’d have already shot her.” He had his back against a rock, partway down the scree just above Hutch. Kahwihta and Attila crouched nearby. She was relieved to see that neither of them was hurt.
Ramirez turned back the way they’d come. Ptolemy had been bringing up the rear. “Ptolemy, what’s the status on our tagalongs?” They hadn’t seen or heard from the zombies since the night before. It was too much to hope they’d lost them, but maybe they were far enough away that they hadn’t noticed that their quarry had stopped.
Ptolemy leaned against the side of the cleft, back at the last bend. He dropped into a crouch and craned his neck. “I do not see them! Perhaps they have wandered off.”
“Or perhaps that is why she ambushed us,” Calavera said. He lay flat against the scree, trying to make himself as small as possible with little success. A moment later, the blat of an airhorn proved his theory correct.
“She must be operating it by remote somehow, otherwise she’d just be drawing them towards herself,” Kahwihta said.
“Does it matter? It puts our butts in a sling, however she’s doing it.” Ramirez turned back to the head of the trail, and Labrand. “Time’s up. We need to move. What are our options?”
Labrand peered up ahead and held up two fingers. “Got two routes. One straightaway, and one to the southwest. Neither of them are marked that I can see.” He looked back at her. “We take the straightaway, we might as well be inviting her to follow us and take potshots. Southwest might give us some cover.”
“Good enough,” Ramirez said. She turned to the others. “On my mark, we make a break for the southwest trail. Labrand, think you can cover us?”
“If she shoots again, I’ll try and spot her,” Labrand said. “No promises, though. She’s dug in like a tick, if she’s smart.”
Ramirez nodded. “You don’t need to hit her, just keep her head down.” She looked at Kahwihta. “You and the dog take point. If there are any surprises waiting for us up there, maybe the mutt will spot them.”
Kahwihta nodded, clutching her cattle-prod close. “Will do, boss.” Guiding Attila by the collar, she and the dog squirmed along the scree, causing the ferns to rustle. No further shots came, thankfully. But she could hear moaning now. If the zombies had somehow lost their trail earlier, they’d certainly found it again.
Ramirez waited until Kahwihta had made it past Labrand, then waved Westlake and Ptolemy forward. “Stay low. Move fast.” Neither man replied, but they did as she ordered. Hutch was next. He tapped his Stoner meaningfully as he scrambled past her.
“Sure you don’t want me to…?”
“Don’t waste the ammo,” Ramirez said, waving him on impatiently. Calavera was last. The big man didn’t so much creep as prowl, his eyes on the heights.
“I could scale it,” he murmured, pausing near her.
“Quickly?” she asked.
“Fairly so,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation – or perhaps calculation.
Ramirez was tempted, imagining the look on Sayers’ face. She shook her head. “No. Plenty of time to settle up later. Go. Join the others.”
When only she and Labrand were left on the path, she started to inch forward, but froze as something shuffled into sight at the far end of the trail, from the direction they’d come. A zombie, wearing what was left of a park ranger’s uniform, including a wide-brimmed hat perched on its withered head.
There was no telling how long it had been wandering the trails. She knew at once that the airhorn had drawn it, though she didn’t think it was part of the horde that had been following them. She took aim, hesitated, wondering if it was worth wasting a bullet. A twig snapped as she shifted position, and the zombie’s head jerked around.
It moved before she even had a chance to do more than register that it had been looking at her. A runner, and a fast one. It was on her before she could get a shot off, and she fell back, nearly rolling down the scree in her haste to avoid its grasp. She grabbed onto an exposed root and halted her fall. She fired, but the shot was bad, punching into its torso. The runner staggered, but didn’t fall. Its hat hung from its neck by a cord as it lunged at her again – then stopped dead as a shot perforated its skull.
The runner toppled and slid limply down the slope. Ramirez turned and waved to Labrand. “Thanks.”
Labrand stared at her in confusion. “I didn’t… I couldn’t get a shot off.”
Ramirez blinked and then looked up. “Sayers?” she murmured. Had Sayers been aiming for her, and accidentally hit the zombie? Or had she shot the runner intentionally? Ramirez had a feeling that no answer would be forthcoming. Warily, she climbed to her feet. She could feel Sayers watching her, studying her through the sights of her rifle.
Ramirez extended her middle finger in the direction of the heights and then turned and hurried towards Labrand. He rose, retrieved his hat, and followed her as she passed him. “What was that about?” he muttered, casting suspicious glances back the way they’d come.
“No clue. Maybe Ptolemy can tell us.”
When they reached the others, they found that the southwestern trail ran down into a muddy swamp before rising at the next bend. The undergrowth had become a mire of stagnant water, and the hum of mosquitoes was heavy on the air. The scattered trees were thin blades of birch. At some point, someone had built a ramshackle walkway of raised duckboards over the worst of it. But the undergrowth was rapidly reclaiming the path.
Kahwihta stood at the opposite end of the duckboards. She waved a hand. “Looks clear up ahead, as near as I can tell,” she called out. The others were already crossing, Calavera in the lead. Ramirez was the last onto the duckboards. She paused, looking back. No sign of any more runners. The boards creaked beneath her weight.
At the midpoint, Calavera stopped suddenly. “Wait. Something is…” he began, but before he could finish, the boards beneath his feet splintered, and he plunged down into the murky water below. A moment later, Ramirez saw that he hadn’t done so unassisted. A waterlogged walker had a death-grip on the masked man, and was attempting to bite and drown him. The water wasn’t deep, but it didn’t have to be if you couldn’t raise your head. She started forward to aid Calavera but stopped as one of the boards beneath her feet cracked and fell away.
“Everyone off!” she shouted. “This thing is coming apart!” As she spoke, she felt something clutch at her ankle and looked down. A muddy hand gripped her trouser cuff. A wizened, almost mummified face broke the surface of the dark water beneath her a moment later as a dead woman, dressed in the filth-encrusted remnants of a park ranger’s uniform like the runner earlier, tried to haul herself up onto the duckboards.
The zombie gave a gurgling hiss as it forced itself up through the gap. Ramirez didn’t bother trying to pull her leg free of its grip. Instead, she drew her baton, snapped it out to its full length, and struck the walker’s grimy wrist.
Bone snapped, and paper-thin flesh tore. A second blow was all that was needed to break the dead woman’s hand off at the wrist. Ramirez stepped back and sent a third blow whistling down onto the zombie’s mud-plastered skull. It slid off the duckboards and back into the water below. She looked up to see two more of the bog-walkers crawling stiffly out of the mire and onto the duckboards between the group and Kahwihta. Attila barked furiously, and Kahwihta fought to control him.
“Labrand, they’re yours,” Ramirez shouted. Labrand snatched his Colt from its holster and fired twice, quick as thought. Both walkers fell, but one still crawled towards the cowboy, ruined features twisting around the newly made hole in its nasal cavity. Kahwihta finished it off, stabbing her cattle-prod down on its head as Attila held it still. Labrand nodded his thanks.
Ramirez hurried towards Calavera. Hutch, Westlake and Ptolemy were already in the muddy water, trying to pull the walker off him. Like the others, it was dressed in the stained remnants of a park services uniform, but it had the matted tangle of a once bushy beard hiding its lower jaw. The three men managed to wrestle the walker up and off Calavera, with some effort.
Calavera rose from the water, spluttering. Before the others could react, he punched his attacker, sending its head bouncing across the boards to stop at Ramirez’ feet. She used her baton to flick the bearded head into the water. Calavera wiped mud from his mask and growled his thanks. “It surprised me. That will not happen again.”
Ramirez nodded, studying the headless corpse. She wondered if Sayers had known them, and whether they’d come out here looking to escape or for survivors when they’d run afoul of whatever had turned them. “These things were waiting on us in the mud.” Ramirez looked at Kahwihta, who was crouched over the one she’d killed.
“Yeah,” the young woman said. “That’s why Attila didn’t smell them when we crossed.” She frowned. “Like I’ve said before, they’re adaptable, both physically and behaviorally.” She stood, her eyes narrowed in thought. “Of course, it’s all speculation at this point. I don’t even know if these are random permutations or distinct sub-species. How does a brute become a brute, or a runner a runner? What determines it?” She paused. “And what if there are more to come?”
Westlake grimaced. “You mean more permutations?”
“Well, you saw the floaters, although those are really just walkers who got stuck.” Kahwihta hiked a thumb over her shoulder. “And those things were walkers too, but sneaky ones. There’s no telling what other sort of variations could exist out here.” She indicated the broken boards. “Either way, they had some help.”
“Yes. The boards were sawed,” Calavera spoke up. “That is what I was planning to say earlier. Someone was meant to fall in.”
“Another trap,” Labrand murmured. “That’s why Sayers didn’t shoot at us.”
“But not an immediately lethal one,” Ramirez said. “Dangerous, but this was mostly meant to delay us. This was all about slowing us down. The question is, why?”
“Because she wants to lay more traps, obviously,” Hutch said.
Westlake shook his head. “Yeah, but what’s the point? Why not just pick a spot and shoot us? Why waste the time setting traps that she knows we’re likely to find, or the walkers are just as likely to trip?”
Ramirez put her hands on her hips. “She’s trying to scare us. Make us turn back. I wasn’t certain of it before, but I am now. She doesn’t want us to get to the Villa, that much is obvious. But she’s not willing to outright kill us to prevent it.” She frowned and ran a hand through her hair. She looked at the rocks above and wondered whether Sayers was up there somewhere even now, watching them. If it looked like they’d been in danger, would she have pulled the same trick twice and shot the walkers?
“Maybe there’s something we don’t know,” Kahwihta said.
“Yeah. Is there, Calvin?” Ramirez asked.
Ptolemy looked at her, eyebrow raised. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m outright saying it.” Ramirez faced him. “Back at the lodge, she tried to kidnap you. She only started shooting when she got spooked, and even then, she could have easily put one right between Hahm’s eyes, but instead aimed for her side. Then there was that stunt at the cabin, and now this – another warning.”
“What about the mines?” Hutch asked.
Ramirez glanced at him. “Tell me, have we seen any more? No. Because two was all she needed to slow us down. And I’d put good odds on her herding those walkers onto the first one. Just to give us a hint of what was waiting for us.” She looked back at Ptolemy. “She’s got her kid gloves on… and I think it’s because of you, Calvin.”
Ramirez studied Ptolemy. He looked almost insulted, but also somewhat relieved. As if he’d found the answer to a question that had been bothering him. Finally, he said, “If so, it is to our advantage. We should press on. Use me as a shield.” He took a breath. “From here on out, I will take point. Labrand can tell me where to go.”
Ramirez hesitated. Part of her was suspicious – who wouldn’t be? But they didn’t have time to argue. Not really. She released a slow sigh and nodded.
“Fine. Keep your eyes peeled, though. No more surprises if we can help it.”