The road up ahead was empty. It looked like it would’ve on any normal, non-apocalyptic day to Mike. He had a feeling that was going to change though. Especially as they got closer to civilization. If a national park could field enough Zombies to have ripped apart the scout troop, then they really needed to avoid cities and population centers as much as possible. He looked over at Kyler who was staring vacantly out the window. Seth had a similar shell-shocked look to him. Kyler would snap out of it and bounce back given time. Mike had never known anyone as driven or as resilient as that kid was. Seth was a different story. Thinking about Seth helped Mike make up his mind.
“Ok. I’m thinking we head back to Westerly and see if we can hook you up with your aunt and uncle Seth. Sound good?” Mike looked over at them. Seth grunted what sounded like an acknowledgement and Kyler just continued to stare out the window.
“Then what?” Kyler asked. “Seth has his aunt and uncle. I’ve got nobody. What if this is everywhere?”
Mike had already been thinking this was everywhere. It dawned on him this could be something localized. There was a good chance that they’d drive into a road block or something any time now. He could picture the National Guard putting them into quarantine and explaining that a nasty virus had gotten out in the area they’d been camping in. The cell towers would’ve been killed off so pictures and news of what happened could be filtered and controlled. The government would want to avoid a panic. They wouldn’t have wanted a bunch of reporters showing up and getting themselves contaminated with the virus.
Mike’s dreams of this being limited to the local area were dashed when they pulled in at a small mom and pop gas station along the rural road they were on. The place was trashed. The front windows were broken out and the inside of the store had been picked clean. Seth found a small bag of skittles that’d gotten lost under the counter but that was it. What caught Kyler’s attention was the newspaper headlines. The three papers available on the rack all had headlines depicting the virus spreading and pictures of riots in cities across the world. The papers were dated over a week ago. It’d all started happening when they’d first gotten on the river. It must’ve taken a while for it to spread into out of the way areas like this one.
“I think we should get back in the truck.” Kyler said. He suddenly felt very exposed standing there in the pillaged convenience store in front of the large windows. Mike looked up from the paper he was reading and nodded. They all felt it now. The feeling they were being watched. They were walking towards the door when one of those unsettling shrieks split the air. They went from walking to sprinting as they all ran flat out for the truck. Out of the corner of his eye Kyler saw someone come running around the building and start barreling towards them. A trio of people emerged from the forest across the street and started running towards them.
Jumping in the truck, Mike got it started and yelled for them to hold on as they both got in as fast as they could. A demented face slammed against the driver’s side window. An open palm hit the passenger window next to Kyler. Once the truck got moving down the road, they left the screaming Zombies behind. It was a stark reminder of how fragile life had become out on the road. If Kyler hadn’t had that odd feeling and acted on it then they’d have been caught inside the store with nothing to defend themselves with. Mike had his pistol, but he’d used up all his ammunition when the Zombies attacked the troop by the launch. His gun was basically a paper weight until they were able to find more ammunition.
“That was close.” Mike said as he swerved around a car that was parked diagonally half on and half off the road.
“Too close. We have to do better than that or we’re not going to make it.” Kyler said in response. He was thinking how stupid it’d been to just hop out of the car on the main road and then stand inside the abandoned gas station in broad daylight for so long. They were lucky they weren’t dead. How much stupider could they get? He started to say something else when there was a loud ding.
“What was that?” Seth asked. He’d been getting quieter and quieter so while Kyler was happy to hear him talking, he was more concerned that his guess on what the beep had been might be right. Mike looked down at the dashboard and the slammed a fist down in exasperation on the dashboard.
“That’s the low fuel warning light coming on. Means we’ve got about ten minutes or so to find more gas or we’re going to be walking to Westerly.” Mike tightened his grip on the steering well and started looking around for options on getting gas. They were driving past abandoned cars here and there but other than that here was nothing along the road but trees and the occasional driveway. Deciding to chance it he waited for the next driveway and turned in to see what they could find.
The driveway was long. It ended in a clearing with a house that had a dilapidated trailer home behind it. There was some fencing in the front yard that looked like it’d held dog pens. Inside the fencing there was a partially eaten dog carcass lying on the ground. Mike drove the truck closer to the house. As they pulled in front of the porch, they watched flies crawling around on the dead dog. That appeared to be the only thing moving around on the property.
Mike brought the truck to a stop and put it in park. They sat there studying the house and yard from the truck. Mike rolled the windows down, so they could listen as well and see if they heard anything that might sound dangerous. They sat there for a good three minutes looking and listening before Kyler broke the silence.
“Ok. I think this is as good as it gets. What are we trying to find?”
“We’re going to need to split up. I’ll go in the house and see what supplies I can find. Hopefully some medicine, food, maybe some kind of weapons. You two hit the garage and try to find gas and a hose or something we can use to syphon gas with. Hopefully, they have a gas tank or something for their lawn mower we can take. Not that it looks like these were the kind of people who cared too much about lawn care.” Mike opened his door and got out. He left the truck running. Despite almost being out of gas he was thinking they needed to have a quick getaway waiting for them just in case. He didn’t say it, but he knew hitting the house was the most likely place to get attacked. Leaving the truck running gave Kyler and Seth a way out if he got himself killed exploring the house.
They got out of the truck. Mike headed for the concrete steps leading up to the front door of the house while Kyler and Seth walked towards the garage. Mike watched them headed towards the two-car garage. It was attached to the house. One of the garage doors was mostly open. It looked like it was piled high with garbage on at least one side. He really hoped the boys would be able to find something useful in that mess. If they didn’t have gas, he didn’t know what they’d do. Walking along the side of the road with Zombies everywhere didn’t seem like a sane course of action. Hitchhiking through the apocalypse sounded more like a death metal band album name than a plan.
Mike made his way cautiously up the concrete stairs on the front of the home. He found himself standing on the small porch trying to look in the windows to see if he could see anything suspicious. Nothing popped out at him, so he tried the door. The storm door opened no problem. He got another pleasant surprise when the interior door opened just as easily. He pushed the door slowly inward hoping he could slam it shut if he heard a Zombie coming at him before the Zombie could get to him.
Nothing came screaming down the hall trying to kill him. Letting out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding he opened the door wide enough to get a good look inside. The place looked abandoned. There was the smell of trash rotting. An angry looking Siamese cat hissed at him before disappearing deeper into the house. The cat hissing at him out of nowhere was going to require him finding a clean pair of underwear when this was over. Recovering his momentum, he moved deeper into the house. It was empty. It looked like a couple of red necks had moved up from Florida and established themselves a red neck fortress in Maine.
There were Natural Light cans peeking out of the top of the trash when he stoppe
d to look into the can. Opening up cabinets yielded mixed results. There was a lot of canned food, but he couldn’t find any water. Looking around the place again, it made sense they wouldn’t have had a lot of use for bottled water. He found half a carton of cigarettes and a stack of generic soda. Deciding he wasn’t going to do much better in the kitchen than the canned food he lugged that out to the truck and set it in the truck bed. He knew this would be a wasted effort if they didn’t find any gas, but he decided he’d be optimistic about that little detail.
After sitting the cans of beans down he looked over towards the garage. Kyler was digging through mounds of crap while Seth kept watch. It looked like they had that handled so Mike went back up the stairs into the house. After a couple of trips to get all the canned food and some boxes of crackers out into the car he began exploring the other rooms in the house. Walking carefully down the hallway from the kitchen he pushed open the door to a bathroom.
Ignoring the bathroom for now he went into the bedroom across the hall from the bathroom. He checked under the bed and in the closet to make sure there wasn’t anybody in the room. Once he’d made sure he was alone he started looking though the closet and the drawers to see if he could find anything useful. Based on the general hillbilly look and feel of the place he was pretty optimistic about finding either guns or booze. He found nothing useful. He started wondering if maybe the people living here had left to flee the disease or whatever horrors they’d seen on the TV news. That would explain the lack of any cars, booze or guns. The only thing that didn’t make sense is he doubted they’d have left their cat and dog to die penned up like they had.
In the bathroom medicine cabinet, he found some prescription Oxy, a box of Band-Aids and a mostly full bottle of ibuprofen. He shoved all of that along with a couple of rolls of toilet paper into a pillow case he’d liberated. Feeling like he’d done a decent job looting the bathroom he moved into the living room. Nothing in the living room stood out to him except for the fire poker set by the fireplace. He’d been looking to supplement their lack of firearms. He’d much rather have found a few boxes of nine-millimeter rounds than a set of cheap fire pokers. He’d rather hit a Zombie with a fire poker than with his bare hands any day though. The pokers would have to do until they found something better. He hoped the boys were having better luck out in the garage than he’d had in the house.
Still pondering whether he thought the people inside had abandoned their dog and cat or just been caught out of the house when this all went down Mike lugged the fire poker set and the rest of his loot out to the truck. Kyler and Seth were standing by the back of the truck when he walked outside. Mike walked over to them and peeked in the back of the truck. He was excited to see a bright red gas container sitting back there.
“It only had about a gallon of gas in it.” Kyler explained once he saw where Mike was looking. “I went ahead and dumped it in the tank. We’d better get rolling soon and hope we find another abandoned house like this one but with better stuff.”
Mike nodded as he looked over the other random items in the back. A section of garden hose they could use for siphoning lay curled up along the side of the truck bed. There was a hatchet and a large wood chopping axe. Some fishing gear and a moldy tarp completed the treasure cache that had been unearthed in the garage. Considering they were almost out of gas and Mike had been hoping to find guns and other supplies here this was all pretty disappointing.
“We supposed to sweep the Zombies to death?” Kyler asked as Mike got caught up in staring forlornly at the pile of complete crap they’d managed to collect. It took him a minute to even figure out what Kyler was talking about. Smiling he put the fire poker with the broom part down on the ground. He put the other ones in the back of the truck for now.
“Hopefully we can find better weapons soon. I’m not looking forward to trying to beat my way through a mob of those things with a miniature shovel.” They finished loading the truck and got back in their seats. Saying a silent prayer to the gods of gas tanks everywhere Mike pulled out of the yard. They headed back up the driveway towards the main road. Once on the main road they turned back the way they’d been going and began looking for the next driveway.
They only had to drive about a mile before they saw the next house off to the side of the road. This one was close enough they could look and see that there weren’t any cars in the driveway. Deciding that no parked cars probably meant no easy gas they kept going. The next driveway looked like it led to a much nicer house than the other two had been. This was a two-story brick house painted white with large red shutters. It was set back a good hundred yards from the road with a long curving driveway. It was a grand enough house that they had a decent view of it from the road. There was one car parked in the front of the house. After pulling over and staring for a minute they agreed they should take a chance on it. Not that they had much choice given the current level of fuel in the gas tank.
Chapter 10: Martial Law
The lights in their room flickered off and on as Randy was trying to figure out how to connect up the iPhone battery pack they’d brought. They’d talked about the fact that the power was going to eventually get cutoff out here. There’d be a generator but there wouldn’t be an infinite amount of fuel to keep the generator going. That just added to the urgency of needing to get off the island. They’d talked about stealing a boat but neither of them was really sure how to go about doing that. The whole ‘trying to figure out how to get it started and then sailing it across the open ocean to dock on the mainland in the middle of a huge storm’ was beyond daunting.
They’d agreed the only way they stood a chance of making it across was to wait for the storm to subside. Based on what they’d seen down by the docks they knew that if they got caught trying to steal a boat there was a good chance they’d be shot. They’d witnessed how mercilessly the people coming off the ferry had been cut down. They had no reason to doubt there’d be any hesitation to dispose of them just as quickly if they were caught stealing supplies from the island. With the idea of supplies in mind they went downstairs to see about getting some lunch and whatever useful items they could find in the gift shop.
At the bottom of the stairs they saw two men in coast guard uniforms standing in the lobby with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. The men were talking to the hotel manager who was staring at the computer screen and reading off the names of all the current hotel guests. One of the guardsmen noticed them standing on the staircase and walked over.
“We’re going to ask that you head back to your rooms for now. We’ll be coming around later and letting everyone know what’s going on. For right now though we just need everyone to stay calm and stay in their rooms.” The guard phrased it very politely, but it was also obvious that this wasn’t a request. He was ordering them back to their rooms and by the look on his face he fully expected them to comply.
“Do you know what’s going on over on the mainland?” Kelly asked the man.
“I’m going to need you to get upstairs and get back to your room. We’ll come around in a little while and let you all know what’s going on.” The man looked like he was starting to lose his patience. Before Kelly could say anything, Randy grabbed her by the elbow and told the guardsman ‘thank you’ and got her moving up the stairs. It was a minor miracle that she didn’t fire any more questions at the guy.
An older lady passed them on the stairs. Randy and Kelly slowed down to see if they could overhear how the guardsman at the bottom of the stairs treated her. It sounded like the lady must’ve gotten pissed off because she had her voice raised and was demanding to see someone in charge. At least she was demanding it until a loud smack sounded, followed by the thud of a body hitting the floor. Forgetting himself, Randy ran down the stairs to help the old lady. Kelly was right behind him.
At the bottom of the stairs the guardsman was standing over the body of the old woman. Her frail body was draped backwards over the bottom stairs. The guardsman had his assault ri
fle in his hands. He was holding it in such a way that it was obvious he’d just used it to knock the woman out. The man reversed his hold on the weapon and brought it up to aim at Randy as he came to a halt a few stairs from the bottom. Seeing what had happened the words were just kind of drawn out of Randy.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve got no right to – “Randy was cut off by the sound of the guardsman chambering a round.
Randy froze. His anger replaced by cold fear he thrust his hands up in the air. In his peripheral vision he saw that Kelly had her hands in the air as well. The guardsman had a crazed look in his eye. He was moving the gun barrel back and forth in between the two of them. He gave them a crooked smile. The other guardsman was standing in the background calmly watching this all unfold.
A Small World Page 7