Surviving The Aftermath (Book 1): The Dead Linger

by Roberts, Liz

  Tom strained against the window, they were talking so soft now, he slipped against the house and stood statue still as silence came from the room. Shit, they’d heard him. He continued to stand until Luke spoke again. He could barely make out the words today. Maybe they knew he was listening. “Beating Tom won’t help, hell gladly let us kill him to protect his family at this place. We’ve got do something creative, flip it up on him.” Truer words could have never been spoken more. He’d absolutely stand in front of a firing squad, or swing from a tree before he’d lead them to his wife and daughter. He heard the door opening, meeting must be over. He high tailed it back to the front of the house, back to the arbitrary lifting and loading of boxes. The sun was starting to set. He’d have to squirrel away more supplies, he only had a knapsack at the moment with a couple bottles of water, a box of old pop tarts, some beef jerky and a mixture of candy bars. He’d have to really load up for his journey, 70 plus miles through the woods, he calculated maybe 10-15 plus miles a day depending on the terrain and if he was able to keep his strength up. A walk that a person should be able to accomplish in a day would take him 2 or 3, he knew they would be searching the obvious roads for him, so he had to make sure to go off road, and still be on the lookout for zombies. That was his other obstacle, he need a weapon of some kind. Tonight he’d finish digging out underneath the fence then worry about supplies and a weapon in the morning.

  The ride was rough, they’d already had to detour twice, it had been over the hour and 10minute call time and they were only just out of the city. If this kept up, it was going to take an extra day for this supply run. Casey made the first call, Jill was right there to respond and answer back. She wanted details of the road they were on and what they saw around them.

  “I think she was just trying to keep you talking.”

  “Oh and Kurt wasn’t? Did he really need to know how the cars were holding up? We’ve been gone an hour and they act like they haven’t heard from us for days.” Casey said. Oscar turned to look at him.

  “And you’re going to tell me you didn’t enjoy hearing her voice?” He said with sarcasm. Casey shrugged slightly. “Only as much as you enjoyed hearing his.” They both just laughed. Oscar decided to radio the cars behind them and see how everyone was doing.

  “Quiet.”

  “Fine.”

  “All good.”

  “I’m probably going to regret saying this, but this trip might turn out to be pleasantly uneventful.” Oscar stated.

  Four hours later, torrential downpour hit. The convoy was slow moving, the cars were maybe able to go about 45mph. They were just over half way, and if this kept up it would take another 4hr possibly. They radioed in, no rain there yet, but they could see the dark clouds moving in and were getting ready for the onslaught. The convoy pushed on keeping in radio contact since visual contact limited. Casey just kept going. They had too.

  “I didn’t like the looks of those clouds.” Beth said, helping Jill work on some remedial PT for her shoulder. While she couldn’t lift weights yet, at least she almost had full rotation of her arm again.

  “Yeah, they are over to the west, you think that’ll hit the group?” Jill asked, wincing in pain a bit. As much as she wanted to do this, it still hurt every time.

  “No idea, but we need to stay undercover and batten down the hatches.”

  “Maybe I should go help.” Jill went to leave.

  “Ah ah, you’re not done here missy. I told you, we’re doing this 30mins every day and you’ve still got to ice it. Do you ever want to use this arm again?”

  “Yes nurse Ratchet.” Jill muttered.

  “I’ll give you a Ratchet. Just work with here.”

  Most people were heading for shelter outside and preparing for the storm.

  “It’s pouring here, how is it by you guys?” Casey almost had to shout and you could hear the rain beating against the car in the background.

  “Nothing here yet.” Carlton replied back into the radio. Oscar spoke now.

  “Well if it doesn’t clear up soon we’ll be stopping because we’ve lost visual on car 3 and 4.”

  “10-4 guys. Keep us informed. Over and out.”

  Slowly all the cars came to a stop side by side. They were completely alone, the clouds were opening up and like some sort of heavenly visual the rays shone down on the main building of fort McCoy. They made it and the rain had stopped. Casey picked up the radio to speak to the group.

  “Were going to do a drive by, we’ll radio if it’s safe. Then well head to the housing units as planned to bed down for the night.” Looking from car to car, and seeing all the heads nodding, he started pulling forward. Oscar crawled in the back seat and opened the newly made sun roof and perched the 50 cal up top. They drove the long horseshoe shaped driveway to towards the front of the building just to observe.

  “Ok this is building 1.” Oscar shouted down. “Drive around here to the right.” He gave more direction. They passed barracks, and activity center, and large area that Oscar called the parade grounds. Everything looked untouched, like a creepy ghost town.

  “Those are the housing units. They may be the most dangerous.” Oscar said pointing straight ahead. He was thinking on the fly now, suddenly realizing solider or people may have gone there seeking shelter.

  “Stop.” He said to Casey. “Maybe we should head to the motor pool and park the cars in the garage and stay in there. That way we’d be all together if something happened.” Casey radioed the other cars to meet them back here. Oscar was still staring at the houses wondering what the best idea was, on the outside everything appeared ok and normal. He just kept having a really bad feeling about those houses. All four cars made their way to the large garage where they fixed and stored vehicles. The doors were all down of course, so they had to do this the hard way. Oscar, Casey and Jane got out, and when to the office door on the side. They knocked, mostly just to see if anything knocked back. They knocked on the garage too and waited. About 10mins elapsed and they decided if anything was in there it would be over here already. Breaking the door handle Oscar dropped to his knee with his M4 raised and Casey pushed the door open slowly from above with his weapon also drawn. The office was 6ft by 6ft, a simple desk, lots of paperwork and a wall full of keys. Nothing seemed remised. The others followed in behind them, keeping watch at the door and all around. Oscar was slowly opening the door between the office and the garage, it wasn’t locked so he could be nice and quiet. He motioned to Casey to go high, he would go low again. Door opened, both men poised and ready, listened and waited. It was pitch black, you could hear a breeze whistle through a hole in the roof maybe. Casey reached along the wall for a light switch, he came across buttons, these must open the doors.

  “I’m going to open a garage door I think.” Casey whispered, and Oscar nodded. Jane and the others braced themselves outside for potential company. He clicked the button, the noise was very loud breaking the silence, light began to filter in and Casey could see a Humvee was directly in front of them. The others scooted in and spread out searching the entire area.

  “Clear!” a few more shouts of “Clear!” and then one of “I’ve got a body here!” Everyone spun towards the voice ready for a zombie, but as you got close you saw it was actually dead.

  “He’s in uniform.” Jane added.

  “Looks like he died of natural causes.”

  “Probably starved to death, what’s left looks emaciated.” Oscar added.

  “It’s late and it’ll take us a while to set stuff up. Let’s move all the vehicles into the garage and we’ll settle in for the night, maybe take a look around this place.” Casey said as everyone started moving to make stuff happen.

  Chapter 9

  This was the night. Tom was ready. He’d gathered a nice size pack of food, and water, he estimated 3 to 4 days’ worth of food, even if he ran out of water he knew there were ponds and streams in areas we could rehydrate if he had to. He’d working on digging a hole under the fence by a lar
ge birch tree. It seemed to take forever, but it was completed. Jeff was dead, he’d been killed days ago and he overheard them planning to torture him next. While he welcomed the challenge, he still would rather avoid it. It was late into the evening or early the next day depending on how you looked at it. There were rag tag guards walking the perimeter, but they had an easy route that they didn’t deviate from. He army crawled from his communal tent shared with 20 or so other guys, to the tree by the fence. He figured to have a good 5 or 6 hour start before people would awake and notice him gone. He just had to pray he could get lost enough in the woods that they couldn’t track him. Snap. A twig broke directly behind him, heart racing, ears thundering, he slowly turned his head to see what was there. A young boy, army crawling up behind him. He looked wide eyed at Tom, and just as frozen with fear. Tom had seen the boy around before. Mostly running errands and delivering the illegal goods, that was now legal, to others to distribute and sell. Tom waved the boy back. The kid pointed at himself then Tom. He did not want to take anyone with him. What if this kid was some sort of spy. Tom quickly decided, he’d let the kid follow so far, then he’d kill him and leave no trace. Better than trying to argue in a whispery silence with the kid while armed guards were walking all around him. They continued crawling, amazingly enough there were no other mishaps, which made Tom uneasy. This whole thing almost seemed effortless. They both quickly crawled through the hole, Tom covered the hole back up with a large chunk of artificial grass he had painstakingly sewed from bits of fabric and anything else he could find. It didn’t really match the area that much, but it covered the hole good so it served a bit of a purpose. Tom and the boy ran down the slow sloping hill towards the trees, he was heading North, in the opposite direction on purpose. He wanted to lead these bastards away in case they followed and he needed to dump the boy. About 25mins, and 2 miles later they reached a wooded area. Both were out of breath having not had any type of exercise in quite some time and being scared, it took a lot out of you. Tom cracked a water bottle open and offered the boy some, he gulped greedily at it before Tom managed to grab it away.

  “Thanks man. I’ve wanted to get out of there for a long time now.” The boy spoke.

  “How long have you been there?” Tom had to ask.

  “Since they kidnapped my mom and me. There was a group of 10, we were staying in an old motel by the freeway, they came upon us and took. We were blindfolded and gagged. I seriously have no idea where I am.”

  “So you just left your mom in that hell hole?” Tom said with appalled shock.

  “No way.” He sucked in more air. “They killed her, a long time ago.” He finished. They continued to stand in silence, Tom wasn’t sure what to do. They kid could be a plant, but he still felt bad.

  The kid stood up, dusted off his butt. “Listen thanks again man for getting me out. Maybe I’ll catch you around sometime.” As he started to head off on his own deeper into the woods. Tom was shocked. The kid couldn’t be more than 13 or 14 and he was ready to head out on his own. Quickly losing visual of the kid he took off in the same direction, wait, maybe this was part of the ploy, he thought. Make me think he doesn’t want to come until I insist. Tom didn’t know what to do in this moment, he’d become overly paranoid from having spent months trapped here. What to do.

  “Hey.”

  “Listen mister I don’t have a beef with you. Please just let me go.” He was backing up holding his hands up.

  “No just wait.” Tom said as he caught up. “Why don’t you come with me?” He waited for the obvious answer.

  “Why?”

  Shocked Tom was. “Why? Really, you’re asking why?”

  “Yeah. How do I know you don’t want to enslave me like them, or worse yet, try and make your little bitch or something like that?”

  “First, I don’t swing that way, second, the place I’m going, you don’t have to stay at if you don’t like it. And third, what other options do you have? Honestly. You’re completely lost you said. Do you even know what direction you heading?”

  The boy looked around in the darkened woods, listening to the crickets and possible owl hooting. “No” He finally said.

  “Listen, I thought you were some sort of spy for them, I was ready to snap your neck because I thought you wanted to lead them to me.”

  “There’s no way . .” Tom cut him off.

  “Just calm down. Even if you are, there’s no way they could break in fort that we’ve built up, they don’t have the weapons. So you can lead them to the place if you really want, but they’ll never get in.” Tom was trying to bluff to see the boy’s reaction to all this news.

  “I can’t believe you’d think I’d spy for those fucks. They killed my mom. I hate them. I tried to burn down there house once.” He lifted his shirt and showed him the whip marks all around his torso front and back. “They beat me so bad I couldn’t walk for days. I hate them.” Both guys were quiet.

  “If you don’t mind me coming with you, I would like it, some place I don’t have to worry about being raped at night, maybe a decent meal once a day. I can earn my way.” They boy said and held out his hand for a shake. Tom had to decide, was this good or bad?

  This waiting was hell. Jill managed to sleep part of the night, but she was up by 4am, too wired to sleep and uncomfortable. Yes her shoulder was healing but sleeping was still awkward. She had to go do something. Dressing and heading over to the buildings she saw a few others getting a jump start on the day’s activities. They were trying to assemble enough stuff for farming, which was the next big trip. Heading out to farm land and see if there was potential livestock left. Some of the farmers, or people close to it, said fences might have fallen or been knocked down and the animals could have gotten out and actually be surviving. Not many had hope for this, but it seemed like a starting point. Jill was up on the roof, sitting with her weapons enjoying the sunrise. Meghan sauntered over. They had actually gotten a lot closer since Jack and she became an item. It was amazing the hook up ratio in this place.

  “Morning.”

  “Morning to you too.” Jill replied. “How’s your mom?”

  “She finally got to sleep, Lydia delivered late into the night, everyone’s good but tired.”

  “That’s just amazing to me, here we are in the middle of chaos and zombies, and people are still reproducing.”

  “Well how to we keep life going.” Meghan added.

  “Just think, a generation of children will be born that don’t know anything but this horrible existence. This ruined world. What kind of a life is that? Doesn’t it just seem cruel?” Jill looked at Meghan.

  “I don’t know, I guess I couldn’t imagine a world without babies. I mean they keep the species alive right.”

  “But growing up in this world …” Jill didn’t finish.

  “What about the babies that were born in the 30’s? The Great depression was full of hopeless despair, it lasted almost 2 decades. Would you tell those people not to have kids? Or what about the countries ravaged by war and bombings. Do people just stop living?” Jill was quiet, damn Meghan and her good points.

  “I guess I just want to make it better for them you know. So they would never have to worry about zombies and fighting for food and growing up like this.”

  “Maybe there children will have it easier.”

  “Hey Guys, you’re up early.” Jack and Mike joined them up on the roof.

  “Yeah just getting ready for our shifts.”

  “How’s the shoulder?” Jack winced when he asked.

  “Getting better every day, Beth is working me really hard. She says in a few days I get to start lifting weighted items. We’ll see how that goes.” Others were starting to make their way to the roof, and other areas below, getting ready for the day to begin.

  “Well I guess I’ll have to the kitchen for my shift. I’m sick of cooking.” Jill rose and headed downstairs. Immediately Meghan became cold with just her and Jack alone on the roof. He had moved into his new plac
e and done nothing but ignore her for weeks. She’d also seen him talking to one of the other girls, flirty and what not. Meghan got the hint. She stood and proceeded to take her place along the roof. Jack sauntered over towards Meghan.

  “Hey can I . .” Jack started to say but Meghan turned and walked in the other direction. He stood stunned by this, but went around to the other side to get in front of her, she quickly turned back around again, but Jack was much faster and prepared this time. He managed to block her path.

  “Move.”

  “No, I need to talk to you.”

  “Move.”

  “No, please, let me explain.” Meghan shoved Jack hard but all he did was grab her arms and hold her in place.

  “Please, stop.”

  “No!” She tried getting out of his grasp.

  “Please!” He held her. “Stop, I need to talk to you.”

  “Oh yeah, now you want to talk? What about 4 weeks ago when I tried to talk to you?” She stood waiting for his answer. “But now because you NEED something it’s fine? Well I needed you and you weren’t there. So fuck you!” She ripped her arms out of his grasp and marched on. Jack squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t know what to do or say. This was uncharted territory for him. He turned and sprinted after her coming to a sliding halt on the graveled roof.

  “I know I’m an ass.” She rolled her eyes and turned her head. He grabbed her cheeks to face him again. “But I didn’t do it to hurt you.” She went to speak but he silenced her. “I honestly didn’t know I could hurt you, not like that.” She was speechless, he seemed sincere, and honest, accepting what an ass he’d been.

  “You almost sound like a grown up.” She replied.

  “I’m starting to feel like one.” He moved his hand to caress her cheek and leaned in to kiss her.