“Hang on,” I was trying to process what just happened in my head. “Give me a minute of quiet.”
“Dude they’re not going to find us up here-“
“Shh!” Chelsea quieted Zach’s rambling.
All that I could think of was the contaminated tearing apart body after body. The image of how they ripped it up stayed in my head clear as day and showed no signs of fading. The worst was the image of the bones being broken in half and the contaminated drinking the marrow of the former person as if it meant nothing to them. It was so hard to grasp that the contaminated would kill one of their own without any hesitation and gorge on their body without thought, though I may be giving them too much credit because I do not believe that they have the ability to comprehend.
“Alright, we just saw something that many probably have not. Agreed?” I asked the two of them. They both nodded their heads. “Okay. Now we’ve concluded that it was a feeding ritual type thing, correct?” They nodded again. “They’re cannibals who eat their own kind, but only those that are willing to risk themselves.” They nodded instinctively even though I did not ask a question. “We can use this to our advantage.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed, “What? How?”
Chelsea folded her arms in anticipation of what I was about to say, “Think about it. We don’t know what attracted them, but the fact remains that there was a huge mass of the contaminated in one area.” I could see Zach beginning to catch onto my idea.
“So you’re saying that we can use this sort of ritual as a distraction to get pretty much clean access to an area, right?” He asked.
“Precisely!” I exclaimed, jumping in the air a little.
“So when we head to Kansas, we’re at least guaranteed a free passage out of town!” He said. “And if we need to raid a store for food or get gas or something then we’re still fine. Just create a distraction with a bit of nose and a dead contaminated maybe a couple hundred feet down the road, wait for the swarm of contaminated to show up for the feeding, and have at it. I mean we would still have to be quiet about it-“
“We need to test it further,” I interrupted. I did not want Zach getting a thought and just running full on with it. That would not end well. “Next time this happens, I’ll create some noise somewhere else so that we can observe what the contaminated will do.”
“Daryl, that’s too dangerous!” Chelsea said. “Unnecessary risks.”
My chest sank inward a little bit. I wanted this plan to make sure that Chelsea would get to Kansas City safely, and this was our best shot at getting a clean getaway from town at the very least, but it absolutely had to be tested before we trusted such a method. “Chels, using this technique would be a greater risk if we didn’t understand at least a little bit about the actions that the contaminated would take in such a situation. I know it’s dangerous, but we need to do it. Besides, I have you guys as backup,” I patted each on the shoulder. “We’ve got this.”
******
We woke up the next day, plan at the ready. The idea was to go through our training as normal, running, swinging, and everything else. When a contaminated showed up, we would kill it and leave the body for the rest to assemble. Chelsea and I had figured that we had never seen the cult feeding before because we had always tried to bury our dead or move them somewhere away from the house in hopes that the body would not attract any unwanted visitors, not even counting the contaminated.
It was a darker day outside. The clouds were low and grey. A lone black cloud floated around the sky, minding its own business. The breeze was strong in the air with the approaching storm and blew a very cold chill into our bodies.
Zach was taking batting practice, and was showing great signs of improvement. I did not have to stand and do soft toss for Zach to simply hit the ball. Instead, he was able to toss the ball in the air and hit it on his own, which I quickly found out that the short computer dork could easily hit a ball over my head. He was not particularly muscular or overly strong, but he hit one with the aid of the wind that covered over three hundred feet, not bad for an amateur.
Chelsea was on her fifth lap around the field when the first of the contaminated showed up, hissing and spitting blood all over the earth. I nodded to Zach and let him make the first move, my bat serving as his backup. He positioned himself in a batters stance as the contaminated made its way towards him. The contaminated was once an older, balding man in his late fifties, as it looked. The parted button down shirt revealed his large gut and a partial goatee covered his face.
Zach swung the bat. A loud aluminum sound rang out across the field, echoing off of the nearby library building and trees surrounding it. The contaminated dropped but was still able to move. Zach moved in and struck it once, twice, three times across the chest.
“Zach,” I said. “The head!”
He shook his head, “Remember the other day, when you took off half of the contaminated’s head, and it still went after you. You thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. We need to learn more, not only about the feeding, but the way to take them down too.”
I nodded in approval, “You trying to stop its heart?”
He shook his head, “No.
