Just then, Abby remembered something critical. She glanced to the right and noticed the shotgun over in the corner, just a step and a half away from her.
The man followed her gaze and in a hoarse, raspy voice, muttered, “Oh, fuck.”
Abby dove for the shotgun, but the man was right behind her as he slid across the table. Abby grabbed the weapon and rolled onto her back, facing the man. She raised the shotgun just as the man’s feet hit the ground and pulled the trigger.
He was so close when Abby fired that the buckshot obliterated his skull. Blood, brain matter, and chunks of bone painted the section of wall and ceiling behind the man as he flopped backwards like a thrown marionette, landing on top of the table.
Abby slowly got to her feet, her shoulders heaving as she tried to control her breathing. She grimaced at the eviscerated face of the man she had just killed. Though she’d shot the men outside, she had not left a corpse as mangled as this one since the night she’d stabbed Henry to death. But this time it was not bothering her as much. She felt a knot in her stomach, but she was not having to force herself to keep the contents of her stomach in her stomach. Already she had broken her promise to Zach to never get used to killing people, but what choice did she have?
She pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell and finding no others to replace it. Abby sighed and set it down on the table. She sauntered out of the room, putting her hand on the spot where she’d been stabbed. It was a shallow wound, and the knife had penetrated her at an odd angle, so it would not be too much of an issue. As soon as she got a chance, she could fix herself up.
Abby made her way back down to the first floor and exited the church. She looked up at the sky and saw that it was snowing. Light, fluffy flakes of snow descended in drunken patterns to the ground as Abby headed for her wrecked car. The other four bodies still lay where they had fallen as pools of blood seeped out from under them.
Abby trudged right on by the dead men, stopping only to take her ruck back. She left their stuff with them though. She wasn’t so far gone that she’d loot corpses, she told herself. Putting her hat back on her head, Abby rearmed herself with her pistol and KA-BAR, then retrieved her other knife from the bearded man’s neck.
With all of her things back in her possession, Abby took a step towards the Jeep before remembering that it was useless now. Those jerks had ruined the best thing that had happened to her in weeks. Abby sighed as she looked up at the setting sun. “I might as well find a place to sleep for the night,” she said aloud.
She turned around and headed back towards the small campus behind her, looking for a dorm. She walked past the church and past the bell tower, looking over her shoulder almost as much as she looked straight ahead. The man with the beard had said that they had people to take care of, and Abby hoped that none of them were nearby. Would a rescue party come looking for them? Should she move on? Abby wasn’t sure what she should do.
“It’ll be dark soon,” she said as she made her way towards a tall building that looked like a residence hall. “I think I’d be better off staying here for the night and barricading myself into a dorm room.”
Abby approached the building with caution, her pistol in hand, looking and listening for signs of activity inside the dorm. The shooting would surely have brought out anyone or anything within earshot, but one could never be too careful. The interior of the building was dark, so Abby stopped to pull a small flashlight out of her ruck before going in. She clicked it on and pushed the door open.
She found herself standing in a lobby that looked like it had just seen a riot. Abby slowly swept her flashlight from right to left, observing the scene before her and looking for anything worth taking. But there seemed to be nothing but furniture and books scattered across the floor. She suspected that this school had been evacuated in haste, either following orders from the Army when they started getting people to the west coast or fleeing an imminent horde.
Abby made her way to the nearest stairwell and started to head up to the next level. There was all kinds of junk on the stairs blocking her way though. She clambered over an old, fat TV, stepped over a pile of books, and shoved aside a large couch that had been pressed between the door to the second floor and the wall. She twisted the door handle and tugged the door open, but as soon as she did a powerful odor almost floored Abby. That entire floor reeked of death and Abby quickly shut the door again, not wanting to know what had happened in there.
She continued making her way up the stairs, stopping again at the next floor. She opened the door and found to her immense pleasure that this floor did not stink any worse than a normal building and so went inside. She walked straight into the first open room that she saw and closed the door behind her. She picked up a chair laying on its side and used it to jam the door.
Now that she was in a small, secure area, Abby unslung her ruck and began to dig inside of it, looking for her small plastic bag of first aid supplies. She found it and opened it up. She lifted her shirt a bit and folded it once so that it would stay up and then evaluated her wound. It had not bled very much, and Abby wiped away the blood on her stomach with her sleeve. Lucky for her, the man’s knife had been kept razor sharp, so the wound was a thin, manageable incision.
Abby took a small tube of antibiotic cream out of her plastic bag, squeezed a little bit onto her fingertip, and smeared it across the stab wound. Not wanting to waste one of her larger dressings on such a tiny wound, she then took an adhesive bandage out and secured this over the wound. “And that’s that,” Abby said as she pulled her shirt back down and stuffed her supplies back into her ruck. Considering how bad things could have gone for her, this day had turned out alright.
Still, Abby was not feeling as elated as she probably could be. Getting a ride had been a sweet but brief recess from her usual bad luck, brought to a swift end by that ambush. Maybe she should have bypassed the city. She might be far away from here and have a better chance of survival if she had. Her goal was to reach civilization in the west, and every day that she spent out in the Wild was another day to die.
But Abby tried to shove these thoughts aside. With her wound taken care of, Abby looked around the room for anything interesting or useful. Just like the rest of the campus, there was plenty of books, most of which were still on a set of shelves in the corner. Abby walked over to these and bent over, putting her hands on her knees. Most of them were textbooks, Abby noticed. Whoever had been in this room had probably been studying business, judging by the titles of the books, but there were also some historical books and works of fiction, too.
To pass the time, Abby grabbed one of the textbooks about macroeconomics and a fictional crime drama and carried these over to the bed near the door. While she still had a little bit of daylight, Abby read about the basics of macroeconomics and then got a few chapters into the fiction book. But after only an hour, it was too dark to read so Abby tossed the books onto the floor and laid down on the bed. She pulled her boots off and removed her hat, then shut her eyes, hoping sleep would soon find her.
She took several slow, deep breaths to relax and to steel herself for the terrors she knew were coming. The darkness of night always brought with it her memories of Zach, and how she’d failed him, how she’d killed him. She’d smell the putrid stench of death and fire as she recalled the pillaging of Little America. And then came the specter of Henry, as vivid and tangible as if he were standing in that very room.
Eventually, mercifully, Abby fell asleep. She awoke early the next morning to a cold room, shaded grey by the predawn light. She got up and glanced out the window, noting that the sky in the east was brighter than in the west. The sun would rise soon and Abby could continue her journey.
“Or maybe not,” Abby said, looking at the snow on the ground. It must have snowed all night. Abby hated walking in the snow. She went over to the closet in the room, hoping to find some warm clothes. Any extra layer of clothing would be most welcome at this point, and Abby was not entirely disap
pointed in what she found: two pairs of ankle-high socks and a pair of leggings.
She scooped these up and tossed one of the pairs of socks into her ruck. Sitting down, she pulled her boot socks off, put on the new pair of ankle-high socks, and pulled her boot socks back on over them. She stood up and took her pants off and tried on the leggings, which fit snugly like they were supposed to. She pulled her cargo pants back up and put her boots back on her feet. Surprised and satisfied with what she had found in this room, Abby decided to spend some time looking into the other rooms on this floor, at least until the sun came up and it got a little warmer outside.
Abby put her hat on her head, grabbed her flashlight, and shouldered her ruck. She moved the chair that she had used to jam the door and drew her pistol, holding it up and at the ready as she slowly twisted the doorknob. She yanked the door open, raised her pistol, and shone her flashlight into the dark hallway.
Illuminating the darkness with her flashlight, Abby advanced down the hallway, trying each door handle. If it was locked, she would let it be. Just a few doors were open, and each room only had more of the same: school supplies, books, and some light, summer clothes that Abby did not need. She went out into the stairwell and ascended to the next and top floor, but the door was boarded up. “There’s probably a good reason for that,” Abby whispered as she headed back down to the ground floor.
After taking a look around the lobby, the only thing Abby found worth anything to her was a map of the city meant for visitors. It showed her the way back to the road she had been driving along, and that was all Abby needed to know. She was in the middle of an unfamiliar city, had already been ambushed once, and no longer had a working car. Getting far away from here as fast as possible was Abby’s number one goal right now. She stepped out into the cold morning air, just as the first rays of sunshine were peeping over the buildings, and started walking west. She stopped only to climb the bell tower to see if she could find the rifle with which that man she killed in the library had been shooting at her.
It was indeed still up there, and Abby thought she’d never seen such a nice rifle. It was an olive green, magazine-fed M14 with a Leupold scope, bi-pods, and a hunting sling. Resting against the buttstock was a spare magazine filled with ten 7.62x54mm rounds. The magazine Abby dropped in her back pocket, and the rifle she slung over her shoulder as she climbed back down to the ground, returning to her western course.
Chapter Three
Despite the snow on the ground coming almost to the tops of her boots, and the snow still falling from the sky, Abby kept a strong pace and soon reached the city limits. She figured she could get as far as Denver in just a couple of weeks if she kept a consistent pace, but she wasn’t counting on everything going according to plan.
The farther down the road that Abby went, the more she wished she could find a scarf or something to wrap around her face. The snowfall worsened throughout the morning, and the wind never seemed to let up, making Abby’s face feel like it was being punctured by dozens of ice cold needles with every gust of wind. She made several stops along her way, anytime she found a building that would allow her to get out of the wind and warm herself. This slowed down her pace, and by the time the sun had sunk beyond the horizon, she had only progressed about ten or twelve miles from where she had started the day.
Before it got too dark, Abby decided to take up refuge in a large house alongside the road. It had stopped snowing around noon, but the wind was still blowing and Abby was exhausted. Before she went inside however, she needed to do something that would hopefully give her some time to get away from anyone who might follow her tracks in the snow. She walked up to the house, then walked alongside it, passing near to an open window. She then continued to walk past the house, towards a field and then another house just to the north.
She stopped once she had walked about fifty feet into the field. Looking over her shoulder, Abby began to carefully walk backwards, taking care to step exactly in the tracks she’d just made. She backtracked like this all the way back to the house, eventually getting back to the open window she had passed by.
While keeping her legs and feet still as stones, Abby pulled her ruck and rifle off her shoulders and tossed them through the window. Then she made an awkward sideways jump at the window, catching hold of the ledge and hauling herself into the house. She took a look outside to make sure that her tracks were undisturbed and saw to her satisfaction that anyone but an expert tracker would think that she had kept on going.
Now returning her attention to the inside of the house, Abby put her ruck back on her shoulders and drew her pistol, her hand trembling just a bit. This was a big house, and clearing houses terrified Abby every time. She was small, and if she had to fight in a confined space like a hallway or a kitchen, she might easily be overpowered. But a thorough search of the house revealed no zombies and no people, so Abby holstered her weapon and made her way into one of the bedrooms that had two windows: one facing the road and another that allowed her to see the footprints she’d made in the snow.
Abby set her rifle and ruck in the small closet inside the room, opened the window a crack so that she could hear if people or creatures were outside, and then hopped into the bed. She had not found any blankets during her search of the house, so all she could do for warmth was curl up into a ball and wrap her arms around herself. She tried for a long time to fall asleep, but her mind seemed determined to torment her with the usual slate of memories. She even felt some small measure of guilt for killing all those men yesterday.
But physical exhaustion began to wear her down, overpowering her mind. She was almost asleep when Abby suddenly heard voices outside. Crouching low, she slithered out of bed and crept over to the window. She looked down the road and saw a small group of people, five in total, walking towards the house, and they appeared to be following her tracks. Abby listened intently, trying to make out a hushed conversation the people were having.
“Let’s just get home, we’re barely an hour away,” a tired woman’s voice said.
“We have to make sure no one is going to be a threat to the community,” a man’s voice said.
Abby now went over to the closet and retrieved her rifle. Taking a knee in the middle of the room, she lifted the rifle up and peered down the scope, hoping to get a better look at the group, but it was dark and Abby could barely make out their figures. She went back to the window to try to listen in on their conversation again. They were getting very close now.
“I don’t care,” said a man’s voice, sounding much like the man who had spoken earlier. “We’re checking this out and that’s final. Anyone can have small feet and still be dangerous, so stop your bitching.”
Abby considered her options. She could threaten the group of people by loudly announcing her presence and commanding them not to move, much like Zach had done when they first encountered Al and Amber’s group. That was likely to fail, however. Abby did not have that commanding tone of voice like Zach.
She could go out and meet them, but that carried significant risk of being killed or kidnapped. Of course, she could just hide and wait them out.
“This is the second group of people I’ve seen out here,” Abby mused. That one man had mentioned a community a minute ago. Were these folks and those men who’d ambushed her from the same group? It seemed likely. Did these people know their friends were dead? Probably not, Abby judged. They looked far too complacent to be aware that someone nearby had wiped out another group of people. Only the one man who had spoken earlier seemed to be alert.
“The tracks go towards that bigger house back there,” another man’s voice said.
Abby allowed herself a sly grin, feeling proud that her ruse had worked. But it was time to make a decision. The safest bet was to wait for these people to leave. But how much longer could she go on without any food? Not to mention, there was a community nearby, and apparently they liked to send out groups of armed people on scavenging missions. One of those groups had already
ambushed Abby, what if she was caught unawares again? And what if she stumbled into their community without even realizing it?
So many unknowns. The only thing Abby knew for sure was that she needed food if she wanted to survive the week. So Abby decided to take a gamble and show herself to the group and ask to trade for supplies. They might still attack her, but she had a vantage point up in her window and a good rifle. She didn’t want it to come to violence however, so she’d have to present herself in a peaceful manner. She opened the window with care and leaned outside, making sure her empty hands were visible, but her rifle she kept within arm’s reach. Looking out towards the field, she saw the group of strangers still following her tracks. But they stopped as the tracks ended abruptly.
“What in the hell?” a man’s voice said.
“Oh shit, it’s a trap!” another man said in a panicky voice.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” a woman said.
Abby rested her chin in her hand, watching in amusement as the entire group did an about face and sprinted back towards the road, so frightened that they did not even notice Abby leaning out of the second-story window. Once they got close, she called out to them in a calm, even voice.
“If it was a trap, you’d be dead already,” Abby said. The whole group careened to a halt, almost crashing into each other like in an old cartoon, and whipped their heads up towards Abby, who couldn’t help but laugh at them.
“And no, there’s no one else,” Abby said.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” one of the men asked, the same who had been most suspicious of Abby’s tracks.
“The name is Abby, and I’m just trying to stay alive,” Abby replied. “I need food. I can trade for it.”
“Well we’ve got nothin’ on us,” the same man replied.
Abby thought for a minute, then said, “But you’ve got food somewhere, don’t you? Tell me where you’re from and I can come by tomorrow.”
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 3