Of course, if we were lucky, we wouldn?t be getting chased by an army of zombies through the quarantine area that used to be downtown Santa Cruz. We?d be somewhere safer, like Bikini Atoll just before the bomb testing kicked off. Once you decide to ignore the hazard rating and the signs saying Danger: Infection, you?re on your own.
Shaun grudgingly slid his other arm around my waist and linked his hands at the pit of my stomach, shouting, ?Spoilsport,? as he settled.
I snorted and hit the gas again, aiming for a nearby hill. When you?re being chased by zombies, hills are either your best friends or your burial ground. The slope slows them down, which is great, unless you hit the peak and find out that you?re surrounded, with nowhere left to run to.
Idiot or not, Shaun knows the rules about zombies and hills. He?s not as dumb as he pretends to be, and he knows more about surviving zombie encounters than I do. His grip on my waist tightened, and for the first time, there was actual concern in his voice as he shouted, ?George? What do you think you?re doing??
?Hold, on,? I said. Then we were rolling up the hill, bringing more zombies stumbling out of their hiding places behind trash cans and in the spaces between the once-elegant beachfront houses that were now settling into a state of neglected decay.
Most of California was reclaimed after the Rising, but no one has ever managed to take back Santa Cruz. The geographical isolation that once made the town so desirable as a vacation spot pretty much damned it when the virus hit. Kellis-Amberlee may be unique in the way it interacts with the human body, but it behaves just like every other communicable disease known to man in at least one way: Put it on a school campus and it spreads like wildfire. U.C. Santa Cruz was a perfect breeding ground, and once all those perky co-eds became the shuffling infected, it was all over but the evacuation notices.
?Georgia, this is a hill!? he said with increasing urgency as the locals lunged toward the speeding bike. He was using my proper name; that was how I could tell he was worried. I?m only ?Georgia? when he?s unhappy.
?I got that.? I hunched over to decrease wind resistance a few more precious degrees. Shaun mimicked the motion automatically, hunching down behind me.
?Why are we going up a hill?? he demanded. There was no way he?d be able to hear my answer over the combined roaring of the engine and the wind, but that?s my brother, always willing to question that which won?t talk back.
?Ever wonder how the Wright brothers felt?? I asked. The crest of the hill was in view. From the way the street vanished on the other side, it was probably a pretty steep drop. The moaning was coming from all sides now, so distorted by the wind that I had no real idea what we were driving into. Maybe it was a trap; maybe it wasn?t. Either way, it was too late to find another path. We were committed, and for once, Shaun was the one sweating.
?Georgia!?
?Hold on!? Ten yards. The zombies kept closing, single-minded in their pursuit of what might be the first fresh meat some had seen in years. From the looks of most of them, the zombie problem in Santa Cruz was decaying faster than it was rebuilding itself. Sure, there were plenty of fresh ones?there are always fresh ones because there are always idiots who wander into quarantined zones, either willingly or by mistake, and the average hitchhiker doesn?t get lucky where zombies are concerned?but we?ll take the city back in another three generations. Just not today.
Five yards.
Zombies hunt by moving toward the sound of other zombies hunting. It?s recursive, and that meant our friends at the base of the hill started for the peak when they heard the commotion. I was hoping so many of the locals had been cutting us off at ground level that they wouldn?t have many bodies left to mount an offensive on the hill?s far side. We weren?t supposed to make it that far, after all; the only thing keeping us alive was the fact that we had a motorcycle and the zombies didn?t.
I glimpsed the mob waiting for us as we reached the top. They were standing no more than three deep. Fifteen feet would see us clear.
Liftoff.