Forsaken World (Book 5): Homecoming

by Watson, Thomas A.

  “We are almost at the turn off!” Sandy assured her. Coming around a long curve, Sandy pointed ahead at a sharp curve to the left. “Here’s where we get off.”

  Mary looked to the right and could tell the lake was very close. Hearing Sandy shooting, Mary turned back around and saw two stinkers drop. Approaching the curve, Sandy slowed her horse and Mary copied her.

  At the curve, Mary saw a dirt parking area on the outside, and fell in behind Sandy as she steered her horse through the dirt area. When Sandy led them into the trees, Mary looked at the ground ahead, noting an ATV trail and that the trees in a narrow straight line were younger than those on the side. Looking down, Mary saw the ground the trail followed was raised up.

  “This is too narrow for an old logging road,” Mary noted.

  “There used to be a railroad here,” Sandy answered.

  “And there’s an abandoned railroad bridge?” Mary gasped with hope.

  “No,” Sandy answered, and Mary slumped down in her saddle. “There used to be one, though. There is a jetty that runs halfway out into the lake and another one on the opposite bank. The horses will only have to swim five hundred yards, I’m guessing from the map.”

  Jerking up in her saddle, “You do realize five hundred yards is a third of a mile,” Mary stated.

  “It’s that or fight off a mass of stinkers,” Sandy admitted.

  “Fuck it, we’ll swim,” Mary nodded.

  When they came to an old railroad bridge that crossed a small slough, both were very hesitant to try it. Sandy’s horse didn’t give them an option and just walked across. Cringing with every step, Sandy felt lightheaded after they crossed. Sandy was certain the only reason she didn’t have a heart attack was because she could see ATV tracks on the bridge.

  “I’m calling you ‘asshole’ from now on,” Sandy snapped at the horse, but the horse paid her no mind and continued on.

  Sandy could smell the lake ahead and was thankful for a marshy area to their left. When the trees ended, they continued on the ATV trail and saw a blacktop road ten feet below them, following the jetty that used to form the bridge crossing.

  As they rode along the jetty, Sandy looked at the end a mile away and could see the far abutment, and even some old iron structure that used to form the railroad bridge. “When we get to the end, we let the horses rest,” Sandy said, reaching in one of the front saddlebags and pulling out ammo. “We can hold the stinkers off for a little while if they come.”

  Glancing over, Mary saw Sandy reloading magazines, and pulled out ammo and did the same. “It’s almost five,” Mary said.

  Feeling like they had been running for days, Sandy checked her watch. “We need to cross before dark. I want to make damn sure the horses know where to swim to.”

  “Damn, never thought about that, but we have time,” Mary admitted, shoving a full magazine back in her vest.

  Reaching the end of the jetty, Sandy and Mary climbed off the horses and led them down to the water, then pulled the dogs off. All the animals drank heavily as Mary and Sandy stared across the lake at the other jetty that stuck out four hundred yards into the lake.

  “Five hundred yards didn’t look that far on the map,” Sandy sighed, lifting up her binoculars.

  “Without this jetty, we would be swimming almost two miles,” Mary pointed out. “You think that horde is over there?”

  “I didn’t see any,” Sandy answered.

  “You think you could?”

  “Get your binoculars and look to the south on this side of the lake,” Sandy responded.

  Spinning to her right, Mary snatched up her binoculars to scan the west bank and gasped. Two miles away, she could see a mass moving along the bank of the peninsula they were on, shaking trees in the distance. “How long you want to wait to let the horses rest?”

  “At least an hour,” Sandy answered as Mary lowered her binoculars. “What I don’t understand is where the hell did they come from? The closest city of any size to the south is Memphis over a hundred miles away, and there wasn’t that many people there. That is millions of stinkers moving in mass. Hell, probably ten million.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t all come from the same city,” Mary offered. “We’ve seen them just join up as others walked past.”

  Waving her hand down the river, “What do we do if a mass that size comes at the cabin?!” Sandy cried out.

  Turning and glancing down the lake, Mary turned back to Sandy. “I’m willing to bet the first hot shower, Ian and Lance are already working on it or have solved it,” Mary challenged.

  Dropping her arm, Sandy looked to the south and then finally shook her head. “No bet.”

  “We have fifty pounds of horse feed. Let’s let the horses eat what they want and leave the rest,” Mary offered. “Then we check everything we can think of.”

  Tapping the vest she was wearing, “You realize with these on and our packs, we can’t swim,” Sandy informed her.

  Looking back at the horses, “Then you put yours on one packhorse and I’ll put mine on another. That way, one of us should have gear when we get to the opposite bank,” Mary said.

  “You can go first,” Sandy said, walking over and grabbing her bow off her saddle.

  “Where are you going?”

  Raising the bow, Sandy pointed back up at the jetty. “To make sure an army of stinkers doesn’t come filing out on the jetty.”

  “Use your guns and don’t let them get close.”

  “I really don’t want stinkers on the east side to hear the muffled pops, since I’m sure they will carry a long way over water. If a bunch come we can use the gun, but I would prefer to just haul ass,” Sandy explained, then patted her thigh and Dan ran over, once again cheerful.

  When Sandy walked back up on the top of the jetty, Mary dug out the bags of horse feed and dumped them out on the ground. The horses moved over, pushing Mary out of the way. “Well, excuse me,” Mary smiled and patted the horses.

  As the horses ate, Mary went through the packs, making sure everything was in a waterproof bag. Before the Boy Scout camp, that’d been trash bags. Now everything was in real dry bags and strapped to the horses. The bags ranged from ten liters all the way up to sixty liters.

  Digging out the extra bags so she and Sandy could store their gear, Mary put them to the side. Then Mary grabbed the food bag and pulled it off. “I want food and coffee before doing this,” she mumbled and went to work.

  With the food ready, Mary grabbed the kettle and filled the thermos. Walking up the slope onto the jetty, Mary stopped for a second to catch her breath and look around. The jetty was only fifty or so yards wide and the ATV trail at the top of the jetty followed the old train line, with the roadway ten feet lower on the north side of the jetty. The road ended in a parking area with a boat ramp and a huge sign that gave times of a ferry. “Wish the ferry was still running,” Mary mumbled.

  Small trees lined the top of the jetty, and Mary found Sandy kneeling down beside one with Dan next to her as she scanned around with binoculars. “See anything?” Mary inquired, setting the kettle down and motioning for Ann to lay.

  “Only four stinkers have made the trek out here, but turned back after a hundred yards,” Sandy replied. “Those buildings on the east jetty are houses.”

  Turning around, Mary looked at the buildings across the lake. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I thought they were just old buildings for the railroad, but I brought out that handheld scope Johnathan got from the camp. You can see a real long way off with that,” Sandy confessed, never lowering her binoculars. “They are houses but look destroyed, and I haven’t seen any movement over there.”

  “I brought food and coffee,” Mary said, putting the rest of the stuff down and saw the handheld collapsible telescope. Picking it up, Mary turned around and held it up to her right eye. “Whoa,” she mumbled, able to see the houses clearly now.

  “Johnathan wanted a spotting scope, but said that would be good enough,” Sandy said, turn
ing her binoculars north.

  Studying the houses with the handheld scope, Mary could see windows broken out and a door knocked open on the house that sat at the very end of the jetty. “This would’ve been nice to have out west,” Mary stated, moving her view to the next house up the jetty. Only able to see the side, Mary still saw broken windows.

  Scanning around the jetty, Mary stopped looking at the shoreline of the jetty. “Sandy, those rocks on the east jetty look like the rocks here,” Mary noticed. “All about the size of a soccer ball, and I don’t think the horses can climb those.”

  Lowering the binoculars, Sandy gave a sigh. “They can’t,” she admitted. “But look where the old framework extends out and move your view just under the framework at the end of the jetty. I spotted a small bare area, like a beach.”

  Moving the scope where Sandy had said, Mary found the area and zoomed in as far as she could. “I see it,” Mary announced. “It looks like a trail leading to the water.” Lowering the scope, Mary looked down at the bare area the horses were at next to the lake where the ATV trail ended. It looked like a makeshift swimming area, but was ten times the size of the one across the lake.

  “You sure you want to try that?” Mary asked. “We are going to have to move the horses to the boat launch on this side to get them in the water. I couldn’t find a trail into the water down there that was free of rocks.”

  “If we can’t get up there, this third of a mile swim turns into a three quarters of a mile swim,” Sandy said, lifting the binoculars up and looking down the jetty to see stinkers milling around. “I thought about swimming over and checking it out.”

  Lifting the scope up, Mary zoomed in on the base of their jetty where Sandy was observing. “If that many come down, we will start having problems,” Mary blurted out. “Why aren’t they coming? Not that I want them to.”

  “Just like Johnathan said, they are afraid of water,” Sandy replied, moving her binoculars to the south. “They don’t see us, and I don’t think they want to risk falling in. I’ve watched several get pushed in, and they fight tooth and nail to get out of ankle deep water. I mean, they will throw other stinkers in to get out of the water.”

  “They don’t breathe,” Mary pointed out, sitting down beside Ann.

  Turning her binoculars north, “Johnathan thinks the parasite breathes through the skin. He looked at several stinkers that were floating in the water when we camped. They were dead but hadn’t been killed or whatever you call making a dead person stay down for good.”

  Before Mary could ask for clarification, they both heard a small whine of a motor to the north. Both zoomed in, searching for the boat. “Boat coming out of that inlet to the northwest,” Mary announced, zooming in.

  Using her binoculars, Sandy saw the speck over two miles away moving out into the lake and turning north. “I see it, but can’t really tell anything about it.”

  “It’s a pontoon boat,” Mary told her. With the handheld scope she could see the bodies of people. “There looks like six or seven adults on the boat with a few kids.”

  Lowering the binoculars, “That means the stinkers are filling the peninsula faster than I thought they would,” Sandy admitted, feeling very tired. The boat was very tiny without the binoculars, but Sandy could tell it was heading north up the lake with the sound slowly fading away.

  “We could just hold up here?” Mary offered. “They aren’t coming down the jetty.”

  “How long will they stay? If enough mass at the base, they will force those in the front to move out on the jetty so they don’t get in the water,” Sandy said, turning to the east and scanning the east side with the binoculars. “What if another horde shows up on the east bank while we wait?”

  “That’s a lot of ‘what if’s’,” Mary cautioned. “Let’s deal with the here and now.”

  Nodding, “If that wasn’t a peninsula behind us I would agree on waiting them out, but I don’t think they will turn around and head back out anytime soon,” Sandy confided, then heard the thump of a helicopter to the northeast. “Oh, come on!”

  Turning around, Mary zoomed the scope out to scan the sky. She soon spotted the small chopper and focused in. “Got it,” Mary said. “It’s a small one.”

  Sandy moved her binoculars and found the small chopper crossing the lake to the north of them about three miles away. When the chopper was over the lake it slowed, hovering several hundred feet over the lake. “They spotted the boat,” Sandy announced. “Can you still see the boat with the scope?”

  “Yeah, but it’s only a speck. Just guessing, I’d say about five miles away.”

  Slowly the helicopter moved north and lowered until it was only a hundred feet off the lake. “Can you tell what’s happening?” Sandy asked.

  “No, but the boat isn’t stopping,” Mary answered.

  After watching the chopper for ten minutes over the boat, Sandy saw the helicopter rise up in the air and fly to the west before turning southwest to come over the tip of the peninsula. The helicopter slowed and slowly flew down the peninsula, passing them to the west a mile inland.

  “They are scouting the horde,” Sandy declared.

  Lowering the scope, “Sandy, I think that helicopter came from Ft. Campbell,” Mary said.

  “It took off somewhere close because we didn’t hear it fly in,” Sandy admitted.

  “How can they still be there? They would have to have walls fifty feet high and spread way out.”

  “Well, we aren’t going to find out,” Sandy huffed, hearing the chopper to the southwest. “The route has us six miles north, crossing between Ft. Campbell and Hopkinsville.”

  “Hold on,” Mary said, and ran back down to the horses. Coming back, Sandy saw Mary had the scanner.

  Turning it on, Mary hit scan and immediately a voice came out of the speaker in the middle of an announcement. The radio beeped and the recording started over. “To anyone listening, this is General Culiver, commanding officer at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. We are requesting any assistance to help us evacuate. We are currently surrounded by infected numbering over three million and can’t break out. A large horde from the south heading for us was diverted and is currently to the west of Kentucky Lake. Reconnaissance puts the numbers over fifteen million.”

  “Those motherfuckers diverted them right on us!” Sandy snapped.

  “There is another mass of infected to our north at St. Louis and attempts to divert them have failed. They will reach us in six days, and we need assistance to get troops and the civilian refuges to a new location. I am asking anyone to engage and draw some of the infected around us off. You don’t need to stand and fight them, just draw some off so we can get out. Our fuel reserves are critical, and we can’t evacuate by air.

  “Under standing orders, anyone not complying with this request can be executed for treason. I don’t want it to come to that, so just engage and lead some of the infected off. When we break out, you will assist us in moving to the upper peninsula of Michigan. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  A tone sounded and the message repeated giving the date and time.

  “Help me not die, so you can live under my boot,” Sandy scoffed.

  Mary pulled coffee mugs from her cargo pockets and poured them some coffee. “You know, if he would ask nicer, some people just might help.”

  “Let me see a soldier and I’ll shoot their ass,” Sandy huffed, taking the coffee mug. They both turned to see the chopper pass over the lake several miles to the south and fly inland for a few miles and then slowly head north. “I bet they are checking for stinkers.”

  “Okay,” Mary said, taking the top off the kettle and handing Sandy a spoon. “We leave now before that horde from St. Louis gets closer. How far should we move before we stop and make camp?”

  “I think we shouldn’t stop until we cross the Cumberland River at Dover,” Sandy answered, grabbing her spoon and getting a bite. They heard the helicopter sound fade to the north.

  “The horses have already t
raveled thirty miles easy, and you want to add another thirty after swimming?”

  “We need to cross the Cumberland before the Army decides to blow up bridges, if they haven’t already,” Sandy explained, then took another bite.

  Emptying her mouth, Mary held up her hand. “The bridge at Dover isn’t the closest crossing point from Ft. Campbell. The bridges in Clarksville are.”

  Pausing between bites, “Mary, wouldn’t it make sense to put a lookout on something like that?” Sandy asked, thinking hard on her own question. “The Cumberland River is a natural barrier to the south. Why would the Army even be worried about a horde from the south when they could just block the river?”

  “Humpf,” Mary scoffed, then refilled her spoon. “You don’t remember that wildebeest migration we saw in Africa. Yeah, those wildebeest could swim, but you are talking about millions upon millions of stinkers. I bet it would only take a few hundred thousand, maybe up to a million pushed into the water, and the rest could just walk right across. Those in the water might die, but you still have ten million plus coming for you by just walking over the bodies.”

  Dropping her spoon in the kettle, Sandy leaned back against the tree. “Like ants,” she mumbled.

  “Like Bill always said, ‘The enemy always gets a vote’.”

  “Then the Army would have to have a lookout on the bridge,” Sandy replied, lifting off the tree and grabbing her spoon.

  “They didn’t on the Mississippi.”

  “Maybe not on that bridge, but I’m sure they are on some others,” Sandy countered. “For all we know, those that attacked us were scouts. Just look at the equipment they were carrying.”

  Not able to explain that, Mary just nodded. “So, you still want to cross at Dover?”

  Sandy grinned, pulling out the topo book, “Yes, but not the bridge. We can camp on an island.”

  Scooting over beside Sandy, Mary saw Sandy pointing at an island east of Dover called Dover Island in the Cumberland River. “Sandy, if I wanted to hide from danger, I’d hide there,” Mary admitted. “How about we camp on one of these small peninsulas in this area south of the island?”