Chapter 28: Witch
Zoey stood rooted to the spot in fear. The Witch was gone.
Where is she?
The former college student presently remembered how agitated the last Witch had gotten when Louis had shined a flashlight in its face, and she reluctantly switched off the light, plunging the area into complete darkness. Her skin was crawling – the darkness felt alive around her.
She's still in here with me.
SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRK...
Zoey's train of thought was broken by the horrifying sound of nails – or claws – being scraped and dragged along the side wall of the drain. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard, only a thousand times worse. The sound came from off to her side, tracing along the wall and coming closer. She braced herself and readied her pistol.
The terrible sound abruptly stopped, and silence fell over the sewers once more. Zoey gripped her pistol tightly.
Without warning, the horrible scratching started again, this time on her other side.
SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRK...
Zoey shook violently with fear, and struggled to hold back the tears that were on the verge of flowing. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and bit her trembling lower lip to stop herself from screaming.
Bill huffed forward through the drainpipe, not bothering to slow down for Louis or Francis, even when they asked him to.
"ZOEY!" he shouted again.
In the panicked minutes immediately following the discovery that she was missing, it had been decided to enter the drainpipe closest to where they last remembered seeing her. They called her name, desperately hoping that she would be able to hear their voices and find her way back to them. Without any semblance of a real plan, Bill felt incredibly anxious. What if she been dragged away into a tunnel and something had got her –
"Zoey!" Louis called from behind.
"Is that the loudest you can yell, son?" the veteran snapped, slowing his run. "I was under the impression that you had a pair." He stopped and cupped his hands to his mouth once again. "ZOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY!"
The silence was abruptly rent by ominous inhuman howls. The search party stopped dead to hear the sounds of running feet coming toward them.
"Um, I don't think that's Zoey!" Louis cried.
Bill shined the light on his shotgun further down the tunnel to see three Common Infected charging at them. "Ya think?"
He and Francis opened fire with their shotguns, while Louis hung back, firing his Uzi.
"Die, you ugly bitch!" Francis hollered, blowing away the side of a woman's head and sending greyish-pink brain matter arcing through the air. Silence fell over the sewer system once more as their attackers crumpled to the ground.
Without wasting a second, Bill cupped a hand to his mouth again. "ZOEY!"
"Bill!" Francis said sharply. "All that yelling is just gonna keep bringin' more and more Infected to us!"
"I don't care," he replied stubbornly. "Unless you have a better idea, I'm gonna keep on shouting, and I'll shoot my way through a hundred people, if it means that Zoey is able to find her way back to us safely."
"But she might not even be alive – "
The biker's argument was cut short as Bill grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him hard up against the wall again. Louis watched the scene unfold in a shocked silence, and the fiery look in the war veteran's eyes prompted Francis to keep his mouth shut.
"Don't talk like that," he said, his voice low, calm and dangerous. After a moment, he released his grip on Francis and continued on into the sewers.
Zoey stood irresolute, her haggard breathing being the only sound she could hear. It had been five minutes, but she had not since heard anything else. Was the Witch still around? Was it watching her? She fumbled with her flashlight. Should she turn it back on? Start calling for the others? But she did not want to aggravate the Witch any more than she already had.
She lifted her head when she heard something in the distance. It was faint, but it sounded like... a voice. After a few more seconds, she heard it again.
"...Zoey...!"
Her heart soared. Bill! Thank God they're okay!
She pointed her flashlight down at her feet, carefully turned it on, and slowly raised it to look around. She knew that if the Witch was still around, and she startled it again, she was dead meat. She slowly shone the flashlight around the tunnel, and finally gave a heavy sigh of relief. Her tormentor was nowhere to be seen.
"...Zoey!"
She carefully set off down the tunnel toward the voices, fervently hoping that she would not run into any more Infected. The voices called her name a few more times, before gunfire erupted from somewhere in the tunnel up ahead. Zoey broke into a run, the sounds of battle coming closer. Finally, she rounded a corner and saw lights, only to be shot at for her trouble.
"Shit!" she cried throwing herself back around the corner. "It's me!"
Bill's sharp voice rang throughout the tunnel. "Louis, you fuckin' idjit! Hold your fire!"
"Whoops! Sorry, Zoey!" he cried.
She slowly came around the corner, and felt her spirits soar when she saw her comrades standing there, amid a pile of freshly-killed Common Infected.
"Zoey, thank god you're okay!" Bill exclaimed. "When you disappeared, I thought..." His voice trailed off.
She walked right up to him and hugged him happily. "I've never been happier to see you guys," she whispered.
Bill and Louis smiled, while Francis gave her a brief nod. Although he did not admit it, he was glad that she was okay.
"What happened to you?" Louis asked.
Zoey shuddered at the very recent memory. "Something grabbed me, and dragged me into a tunnel. It was some kind of tentacle."
Bill's frown deepened at her words. Just like that thing we saw back in the road tunnel…?
"I managed to use the knife to cut myself loose and get away," she continued. "It chased me for a while, but I outran it."
"A tentacle, huh?" Louis said in a worried tone. "What the hell? Do we have a mutant octopus on our hands?"
"Let's not stick around and find out," Bill chimed in. "Let's keep moving. Zoey, you'd better hang onto that knife. I don't want you ending up like that poor bastard we saw back in the tunnel."
With help from the blueprints Bill had recovered, the survivors were able to find their way back to the floodgates without too much trouble. They were not attacked by any more Infected, but everyone was rather anxious to escape from the sewers after Zoey had mentioned that, in addition to the tentacle monster, there was also a "Witch" wandering around (or, as Louis colourfully put it, a "creepy Snow White crying bitch").
"Through those pipes," Bill said, pointing at the now-visible tunnels on the west wall of the room.
They followed one of the narrow pipes westward for roughly a hundred metres, until they found their way obstructed by a steel grate blocking the entire length of the tunnel.
"What the fuck!" Francis growled angrily. "I thought this way was supposed to be clear!"
"I thought so too..." Bill mumbled, pulling out the map once again. It was then that he noticed the red lines on the diagram that Zoey had pointed out before, back in the pump-house. "Ah, damn... These red lines must be indicators for these grates. The army probably had them installed to keep the Infected from getting through."
"That's just fantastic. They did a wonderful job fortifying themselves inside the town, while not letting anyone else get in!"
"Can we try another tunnel?" Louis asked.
Bill shook his head. "It seems like they blocked off every pipe with a direct link to the town."
Zoey sighed in frustration. "So now what do we do?"
The old veteran traced his finger along the map. "We could use the manhole there…" he pointed back down the way they came, "…about twenty metres back. We won't pop up in Riverside, but we'll come out near enough. Then, we should be able to just make our way into town on foot."
"Lead the way," Francis said. "If I have to smell these sewers any longer, I just might shoot myself."
"Hold onto that thought."
With that, the group made their way back down the tunnel until they came to a ladder set into the wall.
Bill slung his shotgun over his shoulder. "I'll go first."
"Be careful," Zoey told him.
The old man shimmied up the ladder with surprising agility. The others watched as he removed the manhole cover above and climbed out of the sewers. There was a short silence, and then –
"Hurry up, get your asses up here!" he shouted. "We've got company!" Gunfire erupted with shocking suddenness.
"Damnit, damnit!" Zoey cursed, immediately starting up the ladder to help him.
She came out at the top and emerged onto a grassy field surrounded by warehouses, workshops and a chain-link fence that separated them from a dark tree-line. She barely registered that it was getting dark.
Already night-time? It was early in the afternoon when we set out. We were in that damn drain system for the better part of a day.
She saw several Common Infected rushing at Bill, who downed the forerunners with expertly-fired shots. However, one of them bit the old man's outstretched hand, causing him to cry out in pain. He grappled with two people, but they violently hurled him to the ground and started tearing into him with their claws.
Zoey cursed and shot the nearest one through the head, and then desperately shoved Bill's remaining attacker off him. It was all the invitation the war veteran needed to raise his sidearm and fire the killing shot into the creature's eye in a spurt of blood.
Louis emerged from the sewers to see Zoey going to help Bill to his feet, unaware of several more snarling figures approaching her from behind.
"Look out!" he shouted, firing a short burst from his Uzi. Heads jerked back and puffs of dark liquid spurted into the air as their bodies crumpled the ground; dark pools spreading out under them.
Meanwhile, Zoey ran over to Bill and helped him up, worriedly eyeing the bloody bite mark on his hand, and the number of scratches and bruises that he had sustained in the attack.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, kid," he said gruffly, shrugging off the pain. "Thanks for savin' my ass, or I would've been done for."
"Hey!" Francis yelled behind them. "We've gotta find cover!"
The others looked back to see more Common Infected sprinting across the field at them, shrieking like banshees. Louis let loose with an extended burst of gunfire, sending the leading attackers crashing down in a hail of hot lead. The stand consumed the last of his Uzi ammunition, and he tossed the gun aside.
"Make for the workshop!" he cried, pointing behind them to a large building. The open service door was clearly visible – a dark and ominous opening.
"You sure we should go in there?" Zoey called over to him.
"Better than staying out here!"
"Good point."
With that, the four survivors sprinted across the yard, chased by over a dozen raving figures. They entered the workshop, and the light from their flashlights revealed a red-painted caboose sitting on a service gantry.
"Get into the caboose!" Bill yelled, leading the others up into the train car.
Francis quickly slammed the rear door shut, plunging the interior cabin into darkness. The sound of many fists pounding on the door came moments later. The group looked at each other through the light of their flashlights nervously, knowing full well that the incessant pounding meant that there was no turning back.