Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Simpson, A. (pride and prejudice read txt) 📖

“Wow.” Jessie said and started up the rickety, ancient treads. “I thought the mountain was a giant solid rock, not separated like this.”

“Maybe there is truth to the old legend.” Scarlet said, eager to see what mysteries they would discover. “Maybe the mountain is hollow and filled with treasure.”

“Right. Probably piles of elven gold with a dragon guarding it.”

“Silly Jessie. There are no dragons.” Scarlet said and goosed him.

There were scuff marks in the heavy layer of dust on the steps and the closer they got to the top, the more serious the two became. Someone had been through here recently and if it was Charlie, if he was still up here, he’d run into trouble. Maybe he’d taken a fall and Ting Wei couldn’t get him down the ladder by herself. Jessie hoped it was something as minor as a broken leg. That, he could deal with. It was a long climb, some sections a ladder, others steep steps but it leveled off finally and they came out behind the famous faces in a deep, narrow valley that lay in shadows. Quietly as they could, they made their way up the rocky path and stopped when they saw flocks of birds roosting on nearly every flat surface. There were hundreds of them, all silent and patient as they turned their unblinking eyes towards the pair.

“Kuh reepy.” Jessie whispered and tried to understand what they were seeing.

Dozens of dead birds littered the ground and dozens more hopped about feebly with broken wings. There was a scattering of them at the entrance to the hall of records, the so-called secret room, that was halfway down the canyon almost directly behind Lincoln’s head. The living birds were gathered around a shed of some sort that was perched on an outcropping of rock further along the narrow gap. It had a long set of ladder steps leading up to it. There were committees of vultures, murders of crows and even a colony of seagulls, their white feathers stark relief in the ocean of black avians. Hard, beady eyes stared at the pair then turned back to their patient wait. Turned back to watching the tin shed for movement.

“What’s wrong with them?” Scarlet asked. “What are they waiting for?”

Jessie crouched to look at a broken raven, both wings snapped. It was nearly dead but still held on to life. He prodded it and it pecked feebly at him. He held it, trying to be gentle, and felt it’s beating heart. The warmth of its skin beneath the coal black feathers.

“Remember what Kodiak said about some animals that were acting crazy?” he asked. “The savage ones he called them.”

“They kept trying to attack. I think he said they were foxes and opossums. Both are scavengers and eat roadkill.” Jessie said, remembering his conversation with the leader of the kids who had wild animals for pets.

“We thought it was rabies.” Scarlet said. “But birds can’t get rabies, they’re not mammals.”

“These are all carrion birds, though.” Jessie said, setting the raven back down. “Scavengers. They all eat dead things.”

The truth of what they were seeing was starting to dawn on them. The reason for the gnawed zombie bones and picked clean corpses around the visitor center. They made for easy meals. The birds had settled in with the ready food source. From the condition of the bones, so had other eaters of the dead.

“Probably coyotes, maybe even bears.” Jessie said. “Don’t they bury their kills and let them ripen up some before they come back to eat them?”

“So, if an animal eats zombies, it becomes one?” Scarlet asked, still trying to wrap her head around the enormity of what they were seeing.

“The raven’s not dead.” Jessie replied and studied the tin shack. “I think if they eat enough undead flesh, somehow the virus must make them want what the zombies want. Human blood. And I’d bet dollars to donuts, Charlie and Ting are in that shack.”

The rocks surrounding the shed roof were covered with the black birds, both large and small, with the occasional white gull among them. Ugly skinless heads from vultures and buzzards towered over the crows and ravens but all watched and waited patiently for the door to open.

The serum in his blood didn’t do a very good job of masking his scent from real zombies but the bird’s sense of smell was more acute, to them he had the undead taint on him. His blood wasn’t pure. He’d be okay to eat if they got hungry but he wasn’t human. He didn’t have what they desired, what drove them to suicidal frenzies.

They’d been eating the undead for months, growing fat and lazy with the bountiful food supply. Hundreds of people had been at the monument early in the morning last September. They wanted to beat the heat and beat the crowds. With enough of the ingested nanobots in their system, the birds had a new hunger that couldn’t be satisfied. They didn’t even know what it was until Charlie arrived and brought with him the smell of what they craved. The scent of fresh blood, warm and pure.

“A while back, I think I came across a house full of cats that had been eating the Z’s. They weren’t very friendly.” Jessie said. “At least these are ignoring us.”

“So far. There must be a thousand of them.” Scarlet said. “How do we kill so many?”

“Shotguns.” Jessie replied. “Let’s make sure Charlie is still alive. If he is, we can go back to the car and get them. We can clear them out easy enough.”

“We can’t get cut or bit.” Scarlet said. “If they smell fresh blood, it will be like eyeglasses town again. They will go crazy.”

They started forward slowly and every head turned towards them, staring their cold black stares. As they passed the hall of records entrance, they saw where Charlie and Ting had been