Her determination faltered, her blade began to shake.

“Stop being squeamish,” she commanded herself. “It’s not Paul anymore. Just cut its damn head off and get out of here.”

She hesitated.

She knew she should not hesitate, but she couldn’t help herself.

It was still Paul after all.

She looked behind her. Her decoy had stopped working. Had they heard her? Had they heard the other zombie moan right before she cut off its head? Was Paul telling them she is here? She didn’t know, she just knew they were heading her way. She was trapped. She looked back to Paul.

“Can I really kill him? I have to.” She cried in desperation, “Please, God, help me!”

She looked behind her again. There were so many of them. She looked back to Paul, his massive frame now only a few feet away. She felt paralyzed.

“Paul, don’t!” she pleaded.

He stretched his arms around her, pulling her close to him.

“Paul, no!”

Tears raced down her cheeks. His head lowered, mouth opened.

“Paul!” she said one final time, then jammed the knife into his lower jaw until the hard steel sank deep into his skull.

He fell to his knees, his eyes still looking at her. She brushed his hair lovingly then wrenched the blade free. He fell sideways like a mighty tree crashing onto the hard pavement.

She stepped over his bulking frame and headed for Cheticamp.

CHAPTER 16 – Defeated

Lucy limped down the road, her pace slowing with each passing hour. Hunger was another pain she had to endure. Images of her friends haunted her thoughts. Her determination all but vanquished, she released the last possibility of hope and fell to her knees, shaking like a thunder frightened dog. She found her tears again.

“I’m not going to make it,” She whimpered.

Her skin was slick in the hot sun, stinking with the sweat of panic. She rose and turned to face them.

Defeated, she raised her left arm towards them, palm facing up. With her right hand she raised the machete above her shaking wrist.

“Fuck you,” she said defiantly, then slowly lowered the blade to drag it across her wrist. The soft skin of her wrist creased around the edge of the blade invitingly. Then Lucy heard something that sounded like a thud. She froze, the blade hungrily waiting for that final cut, as she turned to look for the source of the noise. She could not see anything. The road twisted out of view ahead of her, behind her the groans of the hungry mob grew louder. There it was again. “I know that sound,” she thought. Her mind struggled to focus, attempting to identify the thuds. The mob drew nearer, arms outstretched to take her.

“It’s a car door!” she yelled at them, and then ran. The pain was gone. It shot through her body like a bullet, but she could not feel it, so she just ran. She rounded the corner and stopped dead.

New tears ran down her face.

There, in the midst of the tall, green spruce and the white birch, sat a tiny roadside café. It was an ugly, faded yellow with a ghastly blue trim, and that hideous looking restaurant was the most beautiful thing Lucy had ever seen. She bolted towards it as fast as her exhausted legs could carry her.

Inside the café, a chubby waitress with swollen ankles forced a smile as she poured coffee into a big man’s cup.

“Anything else I can get you, Hank?” she asked.

“That’s all, Rosie,” he said, watching the cup fill. “When are you going to play some different music in here?”

“You know how it is. Damn radio signal doesn’t get past the mountains and the local station is all French. Parlez-vouz Francais?”

“What?”

“Exactly. So we play tapes…”

Rosie stopped talking when the sound of the screen door grunted against its rusty hinges then slapped shut. Hank was about to say something to Rosie, but his sentence was cut short by the look on her face.

“Rosie, are you Ok?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. She stood frozen in place as the coffee she was pouring spilled over Hank’s cup.

Hank noticed the sudden quiet. Forks and knives were not clinking on plates. The handful of diners were not chatting. He turned on his squeaky stool and saw that everyone in the restaurant was staring at the door. He followed their stunned stares.

There, in the doorway, stood a young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, holding a giant, blood streaked knife. Her shirt was half gone, her tanned legs were covered in scratches, too numerous to count, and she was covered in blood. She looked like she had walked to hell and back. The young girl stared at them silently.

“Are you Ok, dear?” Rosie asked in a shaky voice.

The girl blinked, looked at Rosie and mumbled something that sounded like “Don’t drink the water,” then collapsed to the floor.

Everyone rushed to help the poor girl. Everyone that is, except Hank. He didn’t move, his eyes fixed on the door behind the mysterious girl.

Lucy’s eyes fluttered open, and she found herself staring at a water-stained ceiling. A fluorescent bulb flickered. She could hear screaming and crying. Her eyes tried to focus. She turned her head to the side to see a woman lying on the floor next to her, a look of horror frozen on her lifeless face.

“Is that blood?” Lucy wondered.

She turned her head to look in the other direction. Bright sunlight hurt her eyes as it poured in through a giant window. A shadow moved in front of the light, blocking her view. She couldn’t focus on it. Lucy couldn’t make out any details of who stood in front of her like a giant eclipse.

She took a slow and deliberate breath. Something burned in her nose. It was that smell. She knew that smell.

The eclipse leaned down towards her, and the smell grew stronger, that smell of death and decay.

She closed her eyes. Like a familiar old rerun, she knew what would happen next.

CHAPTER 17 – The Mystery

Lucy’s eyes fluttered opened once more. Harsh bursts of light painfully blinded her. She squeezed her eyes tight. The sudden intrusion of light lingered as tiny colored specks floated behind her lids, then slowly faded away. Lucy carefully opened her eyes again, using her hand as a shield. The slits of light slowly took form. The bright sunlight was held at bay with crisscrossing boards.

“The window is boarded shut,” Lucy’s groggy mind told her.

She closed her eyes until the floating specks of colored lights dissipated again, then refocused on the slits of bright light. The window was boarded up. Her mind raced for an explanation. It was only two heartbeats before her mind found an explanation and grabbed hold. The explanation raced through her entire body in the form of panic. She bolted straight up. The sudden movement made her head spin, or maybe the room was spinning. She wasn’t sure.

She grabbed the blankets to steady herself and looked around the room. The door was also boarded up. It was comforting to know that nothing could get in, but that tiny level of comfort quickly faded with the realization that she could not get out either.

“Am I a prisoner here?” she asked herself, her mind still racing. “Where is here?”

Lucy continued to look around the room and then saw it, hanging limply above the door frame: a smashed video camera. Images of the laboratory and Robin raced through her exhausted mind.

“How did I get back here?” Lucy mumbled, realizing her lips were parched. Next to the bed on a small table she saw a bottle of water, a drinking glass and a video tape.

“What the…?” Lucy said as she leaned over to reach for the video tape.

Dizziness grabbed her again, and she fell to the floor with a loud thud. She lay on the floor, trying to collect her thoughts as she stared up at the ceiling. A huge hole was punched through the ceiling a couple of feet from the light fixture. More horrifying images flashed through her mind. Piece by piece the puzzle was coming together. As she lay there putting the pieces together, her mind got stuck. There was a big piece of the puzzle missing. She remembered, painfully, the events that led up to her leaving this house and finding the little café, yet she’d woken up back in the very same house.