Bear didn’t seem to be in the mood to listen to anyone, not even the girl he had become so protective of. Bear pushed past me and jumped into the cab of the truck. “Bear. Damn it. Get down,” I said, knowing that he wouldn’t listen. I turned to Thomas and grinned, “Well, looks like someone is going with me after all.” I got into the truck, started it and rolled down the front two windows. Bear stared out his window, seeming to be scanning his surroundings.
Michelle ran up to the truck and said confidently, “Bear will keep you safe.”
I smiled, “I’m sure he will. See you in a little bit,” I said waving goodbye. I drove down the driveway and turned left towards town. After passing the roadblock we created, I sped up and raced towards town. It would be nice to make this a quick, uneventful trip.
Twenty minutes later Bear and I arrived on the outskirts of Astoria, and I slowed, becoming more aware of my surroundings. I was on the lookout for any of the Walkers cause by the other strain of the virus if it even existed. The Walkers that we had encountered were usually hiding inside, but I couldn’t be sure that these new Walkers would ask the same. It didn’t take long for me and Bear to get to the Safeway, and after we pulled into the crowded parking lot, he jumped out of the truck through the window. “Damn it, Bear,” I said grabbing my bow and climbing out of the truck to chase after him. Bear didn’t go far, stopping short of the open doors. I saw Bear sniff the air and react violently. His tail and short hackles were raised, and his ears were perked and pointed forward. If that wasn’t enough of a warning, he curled his lips back, revealing his sharp teeth, and let out a low growl. There was something inside the store that had Bear on edge, and I had a pretty good idea what it was. “Bear. Stay.” I don’t know whether it was my command or his own desire to stand guard, but Bear remained where he was as I went back to the truck to grab my pack. Searching through the bag, I pulled out a headlamp that I slipped over my head. Using the light, I could light my way while still being able to use both my hands to defend myself if necessary. Turning on the light, I pulled an arrow from my quiver and knocked it. I walked slowly into the darkness, ready for anything. As I stepped through the door, I noticed that while the rotting smell that had saturated the air before was significantly lessened it was replaced with the smell of mold. I glanced down and saw that I was walking through a puddle of stagnant water. As I panned looked around at the floor, I saw that the puddle reached far within. The wind from the storm must have blown a significant amount of water in through the doors.
Bear padded alongside me slowly, ignoring the water that accumulated on the ground. His vision wouldn’t require nearly as much light, and he would be able to sense danger sooner with his other heightened senses. I panned my bow from left to right slowly, peering into the darkness and straining my ears for any sound that might mean I wasn’t alone. I didn’t hear or see anything but Bear must have because he stopped dead in his tracks and let out a growl that would have made me wet myself if I ran into it in the dark. I waited to see if anything emerged and my patience paid off as a Walker shambled into the beam from my headlamp. I drew back the bowstring and took aim at the Walkers' head. My aim was thrown off as my attention refocused on the second Walker following the first. I loosed the arrow, and it dropped low, hitting it in the chest. “Fuck,” I mumbled and pulled another arrow from the quiver. I knocked it and let it fly. This time, I was able to focus solely on the first Walker and was able to send the arrow straight through its head. The thing dropped like a sack of potatoes and made a dull thump and a slight splash as it landed. I started to reach for another arrow when Bears attention turned to something to my left. My eyes quickly flicked left to glance into the dark. I didn’t see anything, and so I refocused on the second Walker in front of me and let another arrow fly. Nailing the second one, I lowered the boy and turned to my left. I hadn’t noticed that Bears growl had intensified as the unseen Walker got closer. If I had noticed the growl, I would have seen that the Walker had gotten too close to use the bow effectively. “Shit,” I said dropping the bow and pulling my knife.
Fighting a Walker one on one was a simple matter, and I was confident in my abilities. The Walker was close, and I wanted to have a little room to work with so, using the same move I used before, I aimed a kick at the center of the things chest. What happened next surprised me. It felt like I was kicking a wall of tightly packed clay. The Walker was more solid than any human being I had ever struck. It stumbled backward but was otherwise unaffected by the kick. It renewed its pursuit of me, and I cursed. This was definitely not like the other Walkers I had encountered. I took a few steps back while I sheathed the knife. This new ‘breed’ required a little less finesse and a little more force. I drew my pistol from my shoulder holster and took aim at its head. I squeezed off a round and dropped the walking corpse. I wasn’t going to take another chance trying to remain quiet, so I picked up my bow and went back to the truck. I put my bow away and reloaded the magazine. Reaching into my pack, I pulled another flashlight from within and headed back into the store. Holding the light in my left hand and using the same arm as a cross brace I walked slowly through the store. I walked down the first aisle and found it clear. Turning the corner to the next aisle, I found it empty as well. The next however held two more of the Walkers, which I dispatched without any trouble. Bear remained at my side the entire time, refusing to leave or even flinch when the gun went off, he had definitely been raised around guns. I turned the corner to find a single Walker standing in the middle of the aisle, staring at me. I raised my pistol to take care of it but instead of the gentle kick of the gun and crack of the shot I was greeted with silence. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I growled. I held the pistol aimed at the head of the Walker and kept it there. There had to be one of two things wrong with my gun, it was either a misfire or a hang-fire. If it was a misfire then it wouldn’t go off, but if it was a hang-fire then the gun would go off within thirty seconds, and I would have to keep it aimed in a safe direction.
The problem was that the Walker was getting closer with each passing second. I began backing away when the Walker got within four feet of my outstretched hand and was considering dropping the gun when Bear took the problem into his own hands, or rather, paws. With a tremendous bark, he leaped past me and barreled into the Walker, knocking it over. Now that Bear was in the line of fire I was forced to point the gun in a different direction. Bear’s jaws were clamped around the arm of the Walker, tugging on it and preventing it from getting to its feet. I didn’t know how long Bear could keep the thing occupied, nor did I know if the Walker could hurt him, so I went against every firearm training manual in existence. I stopped waiting and ejected the magazine. Pulling back the slide I discharged the unfired bullet and let it clatter to the floor. I slid the magazine back into place and cocked the gun. “Bear. Come,” I yelled. To my surprise, he stopped wrestling with the Walker and ran to my side. I walked slowly up to the corpse and put a single round in its skull.
With Bear acting as my guard we cleared out the rest of the store, killing another three Walkers without trouble. After checking every cranny of the store again, I holstered my pistol and walked to the aisle with the dog food. I spent several minutes carrying bags of dog food two by two to the truck. After collecting all the dry food, I started in on the canned food. I filled two duffle bags and threw them in the bed of the truck. Making a final walkthrough of the store I filled another duffle with a mixture of supplies, including canned food, bottled drinks, and medical supplies. We did a pretty good job of clearing out the store the first time, so there wasn’t much left to get. As I was leaving the store to head home, I stopped by the body of the first Walker I killed. I shined my light on it and muttered, “What the fuck?” I took the duffel back to the truck and dug around in my pack until I found what I was looking for, a pair of rubber gloves. “Bear. Up,” I said patting the seat. Bear dutifully jumped into the truck, and I closed the door. He put his paws and head out the window and whimpered
as I walked away. “Stay boy.”
I slipped the gloves on, rolled up my sleeves and headed back inside. I grabbed the legs of the Walker and began dragging it out into the daylight. There, I was able to study the thing a little better. There were several differences I noticed right away. The first thing was that unlike all the other Walkers the skin wasn’t decaying, at least not as fast as the others. Instead, it was hard, almost like leather, and seemed to cling to the muscles of the creature. Kneeling down I drew my knife and tapped on the skin of its abdomen. I thought it might sound like a drum since it was so taught, but instead, it sounded like a solid chunk of flesh. This mummification seemed to add a layer of protection to the Walkers once fragile body. I thought I knew my enemy, the soft-bodied and rotting corpses that continued walking around long after they should have expired. But now, things had changed. The rules were different, and I was determined to learn them. I plunged my knife into the chest just below the sternum and drew it down, slicing deep into the things body. I made another two slices along the bottom and top of the abdomen. Using my free hand to pull back the skin and sliced away to reveal what should have been a rotting pool of organs, but what was instead a solid mass of blackened flesh. The smell was worse than any rotting thing I had come across, and I choked back a gag. All the organs seemed to have fused together in their disuse to form a single lump. This was why the Walker that I had kicked had felt denser than before. I stood and looked at the body “What else is different about you?” I said thinking out loud. Kneeling back down I examined the body carefully, confident that even from his place in the truck Bear would keep an eye out for me. I only noticed one more thing about the new Walker, the eyes. Instead of the milky eyes of a dead body, the eyes were a very pale blue, with pupils twice the size of a living human’s. I guess that this made them more sensitive to light and therefore more adept and seeing in the dark. They had been upgraded to be more protected and to see better in the dark, they had been made better killers.
Standing I pulled off the gloves and tossed them on the ground. My knife was coated in the gore from the Walker so instead of sliding it back in the sheath I wrapped it in a plastic bag from the store and put it in my pack. I climbed back in the truck and was about to start it when three gunshots rang out across the silent town. I paused and waited to see if there would be any more, but the silence had returned. Jasmine, I thought. I turned to look at Bear who was on heightened alert due to the distant gunfire and said, “I think it’s about time to go home.” I started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot as fast as the truck would allow.
Twenty minutes later Bear and I were pulling into the long driveway. Bear became excited as the house came into sight, his tail wagging rapidly back and forth. It seemed that it wasn’t just my friends and me who called this home, Bear was now part of the family.
I parked the truck and climbed down, holding the door open for Bear to jump out. I walked inside and called out, “Honey, I’m home,” dragging out the syllables of home. As if to punctuate my statement Bear let out a clipped bark that would be heard throughout the house.
We unloaded the truck, and Sarah asked me about the trip, “Run into any trouble?”
“Not much,” I said avoiding eye contact.
“Oh, you’re so full of it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“James Ryan,” she said threatening me with my full name as if it were a knife.
“Ok so maybe I ran into a little bit of trouble.”
“Define a little bit,” she said stopping and staring at me.
“Just a few Walkers.”
“James,” she warned.
“Ok so maybe it was more like seven,” I said hunching my shoulders in anticipation of her anger.
“Damn it, James.”
“What? I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“You could have taken someone with you.”
“Hey, I had Bear. And he did a good job protecting me too.”
“He did?” she said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah. I can see how he survived so long by himself. He warned me when he sensed danger and even took on a Walker when I had a little complication.”
“He did?” she repeated in disbelief.
“Yeah. My gun misfired, and he charged in and took the Walker down. Kept it away from me until I could fix my gun.”
“Looks like you are lucky.”
“I told you.”
“Wait, do you think Bear could be infected?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t seen any cross-species infection yet, and so I don’t think so.”
“I’m coming next time,” she glared.
I grinned, “You could have asked”
“Would you have said yes?”
“You don’t have to listen to me. You told me you had a say in what you did. I can’t stop you.”
“But would you have said yes?”
“Hell no, but I would have accepted it if you wanted to go.”
“Whatever,” she said shaking her head.
“Come on, let’s finish unloading the truck. I need to wash my hands.”
“Yeah, you stink. I was going to say something, but I figured that’s what you always smelt like that,” she grinned.
“Ha, ha. For some reason, the new Walkers stink a whole lot worse than the regular ones ever did.”
“So they are different,” she said lowering her voice.
“Yeah, in a few ways.”
“How?”
“The first is that they’re not rotting like a regular body. Their skin seems to have thickened or mummified. It’s tougher, like leather. The next thing is that they seem to be denser than a human. I kicked one in the chest, and it felt like I was kicking a wall. Before I left, I cut one open…”
“You cut one open?” she interrupted me.
“Yeah, I cut one open and saw that the organs had fused together into one lump, the eyes are different too.”
“Different how?”
“They seem to be more suited to low light now like they’re turning nocturnal.”
“So what does this mean?”
“That we might have to deal with the Walkers a lot longer than we thought. It doesn’t look like they’re going away anytime soon.”
“Are you going to tell the others?”
I looked at everyone who was helping to unload the truck. They might have been working, but they seemed happy. “No, not yet. I will before we ever go back into town.”
“If you think that’s a good idea.”
I smiled, “I never said I thought it was a good idea.”
We finished unloading the truck and putting away the dog food. After that, we moved much of the canned food into the cold storage where it would stay until we had perishable food to put there.
As the day ended, we spent our time relaxing as usual in the living room. I had the second watch that night, so I decided to turn in early so I could get a little rest before I had to spend several hours in the cold. I crawled under the covers and quickly fell asleep. A little while later I woke to my alarm and found Sarah asleep next to me. I kissed her on the forehead and pulled on my boots and harness. I found Liz sitting in the living room with a notebook in hand. “Hey,” I said yawning.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh, what’s that?” I said nodding to the notebook in her hands.
“This, this is just a small project I’m working on.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, with all those books we grabbed we only grabbed one or two about poetry. Back at school, I had dozens and a bunch saved on my computer. I’m trying to remember as many as I can and write them down.”
“What one are you trying to remember now?”
“If by Rudyard Kipling. I can’t seem to get past the first few lines.” I laughed as loud as I dared in the quiet house. “What’s so funny?”
“When I was in
eighth grade I was in a speech competition. I had to memorize a poem. Care to guess which one?”
“You’re kidding right?”
I cleared my throat and spoke slowly and softly, recalling the words I had memorized nearly eight years ago.
Liz clapped softly and smiled as I finished, “That was impressive.”
“Not really. I’ll make sure to write it down for you, and you can add it to your book.”
“Thanks, James.”
“No problems. I have to go, I’m on watch. Night Liz.”
“Night.”
I walked outside and climb up to the roof. “Hey, Michael.”
“Hey, man.”
“All quiet I hope.”
“Silent as a grave,” he grinned.
“Very funny. Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“I saw you talking Sarah earlier. What happened today at the store?”
“Ran into a few Walkers.”
“Sarah looked like she was upset over more than a few Walkers.”
“That’s because there were seven and they weren’t quite normal.”
“Normal? What’s normal about a corpse walking around and eating people?”
“The fact that they were corpses and were affected like normal decaying bodies. They rotted and probably would have disappeared with time. I don’t know about these new ones.”
“How are they different?” So I explained to Michael what happened at the Safeway and how the Walkers had changed into becoming better killing machines. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Exactly the same thing we’ve been doing, survive.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said grinning.
“Only one I’ve got.”
He yawned, “I’m going to go to bed.”
“Alright little brother,” he started down the ladder, “Hey, Michael.”
“Yeah?” he said poking his head over the side.
“Liz is still up. Thought you might like to, I don’t know, talk to her,” I winked.
Survivors Series (Book 2): Heroes Never Die Page 29