I took my hand and pointed straight at the mob in front of us and said, “Straight, two, Distract.”
Straight meant for him to go straight through the undead where I was pointing. Two meant he was to run about one hundred feet, and of course distract meant to start running in circles.
We had practiced commands and Wolfe knew them all well. If I would have said one, he knew that meant he was to run fifty feet, three meant to run about one hundred and fifty feet. We also had used hand signals before so I could give him instructions in case we were separated, but at the moment voice commands were all I needed.
Wolfe had learned all these commands in only one day and took each command as if they were the most important thing that existed. I never knew much about wolfs or how wolf packs were organized, but I would guess they worked like well-oiled machines if Wolfe is any example. He is more intelligent than any dog I have ever seen. As far as having him as my righthand man, I wouldn’t trade him for five humans. I trust him with my life and I know he would rather die than let me down. It is an unbelievable feeling that you can’t believe until you have seen it for yourself.
We were ready to get started.
Wolfe waited for the final command, when I said “Go!” he was off.
He shot right down through the middle of the mob.
It resembled a bowling ball hitting the center pin as the undead began to fall as they tried to reach for him.
Then he started running in circles.
I came in behind him and began swinging my club.
After five minutes we walked back up the hill and ate again.
I could only carry so much of the deer meat with us, so we would take this opportunity to do something we rarely had a chance to do, eat until we couldn’t eat any more.
We sat at the top of the hill and watched the town to see if any more of the undead would show up.
Fortunately, none did.
Tomorrow we would go into the town and see what we could find, after we had breakfast, of course.
That night we slept.
Wolfe slept with one eye open as he always did.
Me, my nightmares continued.
Chapter 7
In my dream tonight, it started as I saw myself driving back home from Walmart.
I knew what was coming, I had lived it before and didn’t want to relive it again, but for some reason my subconscious wanted me to go through it all one more time.
Why? It had to be because deep down either my subconscious felt I hadn’t suffered enough or maybe it was my subconscious trying to keep Kelly and the girls alive as long as possible, at least in my mind. Either way I knew it was going to be as painful as it was when it had first happened.
The dream continued.
I was in shock after what I had seen, but I was also confused.
I had never experienced anything close to a nuclear attack before and I didn’t know what to expect, but what I saw would not have been one of my wildest guesses.
When I determined that we were at war, a nuclear war, I knew there was a possibility that I would see large numbers of burned and mangled bodies, but I never expected to see them out walking down the street.
How could I, because that was impossible.
But again, supposedly so was surviving a nuclear attack.
But what I saw sent I chill through me that I couldn’t understand at the time, but soon I would unfortunately know what my gut was trying to tell me.
But at the time, what I had seen at Walmart had left me dumb founded.
Anything else and I would be returning home with a plan on what we needed to do next, but after what I had just seen, my mind was numb. I wasn’t even sure if I needed a plan. A plan for what? They looked horrifying, but did that mean they were dangerous? If so, how? Could they be infectious or maybe they would be out of their minds from pain and were violent? There was just too many of them for me to think about trying to find out if they needed help. Just thinking about them gave me the chills and my inner voice said to get out of there.
Bill and Jim were out in the street talking again when I pulled into my driveway.
They walked over to find out what I had found on my trip into town, if I had talked to anyone that knew who had attacked us.
All I could say was that I had seen something strange going on and that they should go inside.
When they pressed me for more information, I just said there was an ugly mob coming this way and we should get off the streets until whatever was happening was over.
That seemed to satisfy their curiosity and they turned to go home as I started for my house.
I could hear Bill telling Jim as they walked away, “I figured the mobs and looters would be coming around next, damn people now days are too soft and have never had to live through any hard times like we have. I’m amazed that they didn’t start to panic and loot before now.”
“Someone must have just told them what happened,” Jim laughed. “Most of them are too damn dumb to figure out what happened on their own.”
Jim and Bill were old timers that felt that modern society had gone to hell in a handbasket and he had little sympathy for the so-called problems of today’s generation.
Normally I thought their comments were humorous, but not today.
When I went into my house and down to the basement, Kelly saw me coming and walked over to meet me.
She studied me for a second and said, “Charlie, what’s the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I’m not sure what I saw,” I replied as a looked at her. “You know that show you watch all the time, the one about the dead?”
“You mean the Walking Dead?” she asked.
“I think that’s the one,” I replied. “I think I just saw them over at Walmart.”
Kelly laughed, “I kind of doubt you saw the cast of the Walking Dead over at Walmart.”
“It wasn’t the cast,” I replied. “It was more like the real thing.”
“Charlie, what are you talking about?” Kelly asked.
I stood there looking confused as Kelly continued looking at me.
“I don’t know what to say,” I continued. “I saw them coming out of Walmart and from behind the building and cold chills shot through me. To be honest, it scared the hell out of me. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“Here, sit down and tell me exactly what you saw,” she said as a concerned expression began to show on her face.
“I started to go into Walmart,” I began. “The windows in the front of the store had been smashed out. Before I made it to the door, I started to hear the craziest moaning sounds coming from inside. The next thing I knew, there were hundreds of people, I guess I should call them people but honestly, they looked like they were more dead than alive. I mean they had vicious looking wounds and injuries all over their bodies, they were covered in blood and I swear half of them had broken arms and legs.
By the looks on their faces I would say they were out of their minds.”
“Could it be they were suffering from exposure to the radiation?” Kelly asked. “We hid in the basement and just got sick for a few days, maybe those people were exposed because they couldn’t get somewhere safe like we did?”
“I guess anything is possible, I don’t know all that much about what radiation does to people,” I replied. “But I thought that exposure to radiation would kill you or make your skin blister and cause severe burns all over your body. The closest that these people looked to any of those conditions was that they looked dead.”
“I feel bad for them,” Kelly said. “I’m just glad that something like that didn’t happen to us. Did you see any ambulances or medical teams out trying to help them?”
“I didn’t see anyone else except for them,” I replied. “I honestly believe those people were beyond help. There was just something about them that told me to run and get out of there.
My gut is telling me that something is wrong about what I saw. It’s mo
re than just how they looked, it felt as if they were all looking at me and they wanted to get me.”
“I think that maybe their appearance just spooked you a little,” Kelly said.
“But that’s not all that is bothering me,” I said. “As I was pulling out of the Walmart parking lot I could see down the streets that led into town. The streets were packed full of people and from what I could tell, they all looked like the ones that were coming out of Walmart.”
“Do you think one of the missiles hit downtown Bismarck?” Kelly asked.
“No,” I replied. “If a missile had hit Bismarck, we wouldn’t be standing here. A modern nuke would have vaporized the entire city and probably everything within a hundred miles.”
“Well I still think it has something to do with the radiation,” Kelly said.
“The people that I saw didn’t look like they had suffered any kind of radiation burns,” I replied. “But whatever their problem is, I think they are heading our way.”
“What makes you think that?” Kelly asked.
“As I drove away I kept looking in my rearview mirror. I swear I saw them crossing the intersection and they started to come down our road,” I replied. “I saw Bill and Jim outside when I pulled into the driveway, I told them that I thought they should get inside because I saw some kind of ugly mob at Walmart and they looked like they were coming our way. I didn’t want to tell them what I told you because they would think I was crazy.”
“How long do you think it will be before they get here?” Kelly asked.
“Like I said they can’t walk very well, they moved in a strange stiff jerky motion, so maybe an hour,” I replied. “That is if they were really coming this way, I could have just been spooked by the sight of them and let my imagination run away with me.”
“I don’t know Charlie, I’ve never seen you get spooked like this before,” Kelly said. “You’re not the kind of person to panic, maybe we should just stay inside until we see if they do come down our way.”
“If those people were responsible for smashing out all the windows at Walmart, I think we better do more than just stay inside. I’m going up stairs and get my gun and make sure all the doors are locked.”
“Do you really think we will need your gun?” Kelly asked then looked at the expression on my face. “Go ahead and get your gun, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have it just in case.”
I went upstairs and got my hunting rife and a few boxes of shells, but then I put them back in the gun rack and grabbed my shotgun. Rifles were good for a long-range shot, but you couldn’t beat a shotgun for close in defense. I had no intention of trying to pickup off anyone as they approached, but if they tried to get into my house, well, with a shotgun I couldn’t miss and at close range a blast from a shotgun would stop anything dead in its tracks.
It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt anyone, that was the last thing I wanted to do, but what I had seen down near Walmart had me concerned, really, it had me scared. Like I said, it was a gut feeling that I couldn’t explain, but it was also a feeling I was afraid to ignore and write off as irrational.
Kelly made sure she knew where the girls were and had also gathered up the last of the snacks and canned goods and brought them down to the basement where we had been staying for the last four days. The upstairs had been trashed pretty bad by the aftermath of the missile attacks and until we felt more confident about what to expect and were able to start repair work on the house, we felt secure and comfortable enough in the basement for now.
Kelly pointed out that our supply of food was getting low when she returned to the basement, but I had already been thinking about that for a couple of days. After my trip to Walmart, I began to feel that food could be a real problem very soon.
Kelly played Go Fish with the girls to keep them occupied while I sat below the corner basement window and watched the street.
There were four one foot high by two-foot wide widows, one on each of the basement walls. The small windows were level with the ground and their only real purpose was to allow some sunlight into the basement to keep it from becoming damp and musty.
I slid the window open a few inches so I could listen for any sounds out on the street, figuring that I would hear if anyone was coming down our street long before I could see anyone.
It had been over an hour and I was starting to have second thoughts about what I had seen.
Maybe I hadn’t fully recovered from whatever had made us all ill the day of the attack. I figured we had all suffered from some degree of radiation sickness that could still be playing havoc with my vision or my mind.
After all, we had just suffered a nuclear attack, I could be in a coma and was just dreaming all of this. My house along with all of Bismarck could be nothing but a pile of rubble.
We really had no idea of what all kind of side effects we would experience before this would be over.
But when I heard Tammy giggle and say Go Fish and then Jamie began to groan, it was as if her groan was being broadcast all around the neighborhood as the groaning sounds echoed off the houses on our street.
Even Kelly looked over at me as the sound started.
She got up and walked over next to me and looked up and out of the window.
The moaning grew louder and sounded like it was coming from everywhere, but we still couldn’t see anyone outside the window.
Then Kelly gasped, putting her hands over her mouth to keep the girls from hearing her.
Outside our window stood two bloody bare feet, then more feet began to shuffle by the window.
Some feet had on shoes, some feet only had on one shoe, some feet were not actually feet, but were more like worn down stubs of flesh and bone.
Kelly looked at me.
I held my finger up to my lips.
We both stared out the window as the feet moved across the yard, out onto the street and soon we were able to see a little more than just feet and legs.
The low level of our window made it difficult to see much, but we could tell the street was crowded with bodies that didn’t look in any better condition than the feet that first appeared at our basement window.
We stood watching a horror show, a parade of the bloody, brutally wounded and horribly disfigured bodies, moaning as they staggered between the buildings and down the street.
“My God,” Kelley whispered, “I thought you were exaggerating.”
“Look at them Kelly,” I whispered. “How can they still be alive and moving?”
“Pain can make people do some strange things,” Kelly replied. “Maybe the radiation has their minds so screwed up that they aren’t feeling any pain at all, that’s why they can look like that and still be moving.”
As we watched what we were able to see from inside our basement window, we heard Bill yelling from across the street.
It was hard to hear what he was saying over the sound of the groaning, but we were able to make out a few words about he wanted them to get away from his house.
But shortly after we heard Bill’s voice, the volume of the groans outside our house increased a hundredfold.
Then all the feet and legs we could see suddenly turned and seemed to stampede towards Bill’s house.
We heard Bill’s shotgun erupt as both barrels exploded.
Kelly and I quickly moved to the window that faced Bill’s house, but we couldn’t see anything but the back of the mob that was charging at his house.
“What do you think is happening over at Bill’s?” Kelly whispered.
“I don’t know, but I think I’ve seen enough to know that those people are dangerous,” I replied. “Did you see how they all turned and rushed over towards Bill’s house? And Bill’s shooting off his gun didn’t seem to make any of them turn and start going in another direction.”
“I think it just made them want to go towards his house even more,” Kelly replied. “I just wish I could see what’s going on over at Bill’s.”
“For now, I think we just need to
stay quiet and not get too close to the windows until these people move on,” I replied. “I prefer they didn’t find out that we are here just yet. I’m afraid of what they would do if they discovered we were here.”
We sat quietly and waited for almost two hours while we watched the parade of bloody lower extremities move past our ground level window.
When the crowd began to thin out, we got our first look at Bill’s house and we saw Bill’s body lying across the street on the ground in front of his house.
It was hard to tell from our vantage point, but from what I could see he appeared to have been torn apart.
One of my questions had been answered, will still didn’t know what had happened to those people, but we now knew that they were insanely dangerous.
How dangerous they could be we were just beginning to find out.
Chapter 8
I had stayed up half the night putting thin slices of deer meat on the fire before I finally became too tired to do anymore and turned in. I wanted to finishing processing the deer as quickly as I could because I knew we could be forced to move on sooner than I wanted.
I was also hoping the smell of roasting meat wouldn’t attract any visitors looking for a meal, so I kept a close watch on Wolfe during the night knowing if anything came within three hundred feet of us, his nose would alert me. Even though Wolfe was sleeping, his nose was always awake and alert, it somehow worked around the clock.
Maybe it was because of the undead that had been in the small town below that we didn’t detect any animals out on the prowl last night. I’ve noticed in my travels that even though animals don’t seem to get infected, they stayed far away from the undead. It was as if they knew or sensed something about the undead that made them turn and run in the opposite direction.
Being that animals seem to have the ability to sense emotions, I can only imagine what they sense when they see one of the undead.
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