Live Another Day by Baileigh Higgins (reading in the dark .txt) 📗

her through, slamming them shut behind her. It was a chilling sound. Now there was nothing that stood between her and the encroaching zombies. It was just her and her knife.

She set off in the direction he'd shown her, keeping to a slow jog this time. Her head whirled, and she strained to see through the pouring rain and the black night. Her flashlight barely illuminated her path, and she stumbled across the uneven ground. Tussocks of grass and loose stones appeared from the gloom to slow her further. A tall, thin silhouette caused her to whirl in readiness with her knife raised until she realized it was a tree.

“Shit,” she swore, running past it. “I don't have time for this.”

The faint sound of voices up ahead spurred her on, and she finally arrived at the eastern fence to find the world in chaos. People grappled with others, some moving with purposeful agility and others with mindless aggression. The dead had found a way in, and now it was up to them to stop the influx of corpses.

A figure lurched toward her, its face caught in the beam of her light for a second. Rotten teeth were spread open in mid-attack as the creature leaned in for a bite. Without pausing, she shoved it back before plunging her knife into its forehead. The thing shuddered while its mouth snapped at the air until it stilled. With a kick, she freed her weapon then whirled when something grabbed her shoulder.

“Whoa, there. Lisa?”

Her eyes fell on Max's surprised face, and she nearly laughed out of relief. “I came to help!”

He bobbed his head before turning. “Over there. Keep them off us while we repair the gap.”

She stumbled after him, stopping only once to wait while he killed another snarling zombie that came in for the kill. They were in a small clearing between a few trees. A dying flare cast a red glow on the ground before another bloomed to life in the hands of Breytenbach. Its light shimmered on the strands of wire that ran alongside the clearing and made up the fence.

Immediately, Lisa saw what the problem was. A massive tree inside the fence had fallen over. Its thick trunk had smashed the barrier into the ground while its dense foliage and numerous branches filled the moat and created a bridge. The area swarmed with infected, all making their way across this bridge and through the fence.

People with shovels cleared away the mud and debris around the tree and the crash site while others fought the infected. Immediately, she jumped into action and pounced on a zombie that reached skeletal fingers toward Max's arm. Her knife sank into the eyeball and burst the delicate organ to release a spray of putrid fluid lost seconds later in the rain.

Another replaced it, and she stabbed it in the temple with a backward thrust of her hand. Her foot swept the legs from beneath another, and she drove her weapon into its forehead while it squirmed under her. The past few weeks of weapon's training now came into play, and she never skipped a beat. Her body moved of its own accord, and she lost herself in the battle. The world around her faded as the singular joy of victory filled her each time an undead corpse fell beneath her hands.

Her focus got broken when the rain lessened, its downpour easing only to reveal a different sound. That of a tractor. She twisted around to see Joseph driving up in the excavator. Mainly used for the backhoe attached to the back, today it served a different purpose. With the front end lowered, Joseph bulldozed into the tree and pushed the remains of the roots out of the ground already softened by the storm.

Maneuvering away, he then pushed into it again and shifted the entire thing through the gap it had already made in the fence. The engine roared as the tree fought it, its branches scraping through the mud and breaking off inside the moat. The crackling snaps of broken wood filled Lisa's ears as she watched in awe. Infected and tree were pushed out like so much debris until finally, the opening was clear.

“Right,” Max shouted, waving at the vehicle that had driven up behind the excavator, its lights throwing the clearing into bright relief. “Come on in!”

The vehicle, which turned out to be Tallulah and driven by Mike, pushed forward and parked its bulk inside the opening in the fence and blocked it. Those carrying shovels now jumped in and stopped up the gaps on the sides and beneath with mud, stones, and branches, assisted by the excavator. Its backhoe now came into play, digging up vast chunks of earth to further build up the barricade. Those not working on the fence mopped up the few infected stragglers still on the inside.

Throwing herself into the fray, Lisa killed two more undead before she straightened up to find they were all down. The rain, now a gentle drizzle, washed the blood and muck from her skin while she fought to regain her breath. She ran a trembling hand across her forehead and grinned as spontaneous happiness welled up inside her. “We did it!”

Her joy was echoed by those around her as they high-fived and laughed, congratulating each other on averting what could have been a disaster. Max clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks, Lisa. We couldn't have done this without you.”

He then turned to the gathering. “Go on, guys. Get inside and get dried off. You've done enough.”

“What about that?” Ronnie asked, gesturing to the fence and the zombies that clawed at it on the other side. The wall had been mended, but there was still a tree inside the moat creating a bridge.

“It's all right. The fence should hold, and tomorrow we can clear it out and repair it. For now, I'll stay here with Joseph while he fortifies this stretch of wire with an earth embankment.”

“More like a mud embankment!”