The van rocked back upright onto its wheels. On top of the draugar, Vin had the advantage, and gained his composure, striking the draugar on the head. That did little if any damage, and the draugar grabbed Vin’s head and threw him over on his back. Vin broke his fall with his hands, keeping his head from hitting the sidewalk, but his legs slammed into the wall of the hardware store.
Jocelyn stood up and almost lost her balance as she climbed over Jize. She leaped out and faced an adult female draugar and vaguely wondered if she had children, and, if so, whether she had eaten their brains. Jocelyn drew her sword and sliced clean through her neck, her head tumbling down, her body slumping onto the cement.
A draugar to her left sped up toward Vin, and Jocelyn, out of sword range, dropped her sword and picked up Vin’s shotgun, pumped it, aimed, and fired. Its head exploded, the body propelled toward the wall.
Jocelyn looked around. A third draugar climbed through the door into the third row. Janice and Emily screamed. Jize, his useless gun out, retreated to where Jocelyn had been sitting. Jocelyn didn’t want to risk hitting Emily with shotgun shell pellets, so she dropped her shotgun, picked up her sword, and entered the van. She did not have enough room inside the van, though, to swing her sword. Instead, she thrust it into the draugar’s neck, trying to get in between vertebrae, and the draugar went limp, its body draped over Emily, its head resting on Janice. Puss oozed from a sore on the draugar’s face. Janice looked at it in sheer horror. Emily wailed.
Knowing the draugar might revive at any moment, Jocelyn pulled the draugar off onto the floor between the seats. While she did that, strong hands gripped her underneath her armpits. Tossed around, she dropped her sword and fell on her side onto the sidewalk, hitting her head. She no longer had a weapon. A draugar straddled her and struck her in the head with strong and directed punches.
A shot rang out, and the striking stopped. Marty kicked the draugar off of her, followed by two more shotgun shots. She guessed the draugar was dead, but not taking any chances, she crawled away in the opposite the direction of where she thought the draugar fell, pushed herself up, and looked around. No draugar moved.
She walked over to the sliding door and looked inside: no live draugar, just the one at Janice and Emily’s feet that didn’t stir.
Janice winced in pain. Emily continued to wail. Jize stared at Jocelyn in horror.
“They’re bitten,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Jocelyn retrieved her sword and circled the van. All the draugar were down, some heads almost pulverized by shotgun blasts. She doubled back to the van, and she and Marty pulled the draugar out onto the sidewalk. She made the rounds and severed all the necks, making sure all the draugar were dead and couldn’t come back to life.
But the damage was done.
Chapter Thirty-One
Day Nine
The first thing Marty needed to do was to quiet Emily, whose wailing might attract zombies or other hostiles. He had at least some experience in doing so with Amanda. I’m sorry, Amanda.
He propped his shotgun up against the van and climbed in. Jize sat in the middle row, just staring at Janice and Emily. Marty surmised he was shell-shocked. When Marty looked at the woman and the girl, he noticed the bite wounds. One on Emily’s forearm, one on Janice’s shoulder, both through their sweat shirts.
Oh, shit.
Never mind the crying, they had a much worse problem. He hesitated.
Would they turn into zombies right now? Should he and Jize get out of that van?
Janice met his stare.
“You two, go,” she said, barely above Emily’s crying. She then grabbed Emily and held onto her, gently telling her to hush, that everything would be all right.
Of course, as Marty and Jize retreated out of the van, he knew everything was not all right. Not at all.
They were in uncharted territory. Normally, the virus transmitted immediately, and symptoms developed in less than a minute. But in those cases, the “patient” appeared to die with their brains eaten.
But not always.
Jocelyn, with her four-day delirium after her bite, during which she fought off the disease, appeared to be immune.
There were the pre-apocalypse cases. The virus remained dormant, though with some unspecified symptoms—Alexander reported them to appear flu-like in the woman he talked to right before she turned, but he wasn’t sure—until the shit hit the fan. Turning into zombies seemed to have occurred all at once, or, at least, within an hour or two. And clearly, there was more than one “patient zero” because otherwise, it would take far longer for the outbreak to travel from Beaver Park to New York City than it did.
And now there was Janice and Emily. Both were bitten, but they hadn’t died, nor was any part of their brain eaten. What route would they follow?
How many people had been bitten, like Jocelyn, only to succumb to the brain-eating? What would have happened to them if they hadn’t? Jocelyn was the only person any of them had come across where the brain had not been eaten, until Janice and Emily.
“Why did you leave?” Vin asked Marty and Jize. “Will someone shut Emily up?”
“They’ve been bitten,” Marty said.
“Oh, Jesus!” Vin exclaimed. He took his shotgun and raised it, moving toward the door.
“Hold up, Vin!” Marty yelled. “They’re not zombies!”
Vin scowled. “Not yet zombies, you mean.”
Marty picked up his shotgun and aimed it at Vin. Vin scowled again. “I’m not going to shoot them, you dumb ass!”
“Aren’t you?” Marty asked calmly.
Vin lowered his gun. “No, idiot, I’m not. But we need to protect ourselves in case they become zombies. Why don’t you go get the first aid kit and let
