A guttural scream once again broke the silence. Wilson had stopped his twitching and with dirty yellow teeth ripped a massive string of muscle off the arm of the woman nearest him. She had looked away for a moment to watch Mike kill the elder and paid the price for her inattention. She clutched at her arm and tried to roll away, but Wilson’s mute undead fury got to her first. He grabbed her around the hips and sank his teeth into her buttock, shaking his head like a shark and ripping a plum sized piece of flesh out. She kicked at him and screamed again.
Mike strode towards them but didn’t reach them in time to stop Wilson from biting the other woman who was trying to help. She was beating on him, trying to get him to let the other woman go. Her arm flashed in front of his face and stayed there just long enough for him to grab it and bite it. As he ground his teeth into her bones Mike reached them and brought the river stone down once more, smashing Wilson’s skull in. Wilson’s pale eyes rolled up into his head, and he went slack and slumped onto his back.
Mike was stammering, trying to catch his breath as the injured women moaned in pain. Six of the locals who participated in the ceremony took off running into the pitch black forest, completely naked. Those remaining had started to calm themselves and were rendering aid to the two bitten women.
Mike returned to Michelle and dropped his bloody stone. He gathered her into his arms and they held each other, naked bodies pressed against one another for some time.
*****
Without Wilson’s flashlight they took nearly half an hour to stumble through the impossibly thick and black trail to get back to the cars. They’d dressed themselves as best they could in the dark, with Mike cursing his foolishness for having gotten them into whatever it was that had just happened.
The others carried the two wounded women back along the trail, but by the time they reached the cars, it was obvious there was something very wrong with them. Michelle thought it had only been perhaps a half an hour since they were bitten, but they were already feverish and becoming weak. She thought it might’ve been the loss of blood, but this was something different. It felt wrong to her. Everything felt wrong to her now.
When they finally reached the artificial clearing where the vehicles were parked everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief. Mike threw open the driver’s side door and the interior dome light lit, shedding light on the inky black jungle. The dark brown skin of the women was covered in crimson streaks from their wounds. The woman who had been bitten on the arm had her ivory bones exposed to the air, and she bit her lip against the pain. Michelle admired her strength.
Mike tossed his backpack in the Rover and spoke to the survivors. Michelle didn’t speak the local dialect well, so their conversation was largely lost to her. She got her bag in the truck and sat down in the passenger side. She wasn’t looking forward to the jarring ride back to the village, but at least it would get her away from the madness she just lived through. Mike and one of the men spoke hurriedly for a minute or two, and then finally clasped hands. Mike jogged back to the truck and got in, shutting the door with a thud.
He put the keys into the ignition and sat next to her in the silence. Together they watched the others load the wounded women into the truck and get ready to lead them back. Mike spoke first.
“What the fuck just happened out there?” His voice was high pitched and cracking, she could hear he was close to tears.
“Mike I don’t know. I think we may have just witnessed something bigger than anything that’s happened in thousands of years,” she whispered back to him.
“What was that voice? The one at the end. Was it God? Allah? A spirit? A ghost? The Devil? What?” He sobbed once quickly, and caught himself, reining it in. He twisted the ignition and the Rover’s powerful motor roared to life.
“I don’t know Mike,” Michelle lied to him. She had a damn good feeling she knew who the speaker was, but didn’t want to make it any worse. Michelle reached over and took his hand once more. Mike squeezed it once, and put the truck in gear to follow their new guides out.
The road out was just as shitty as when they’d driven in. Michelle winced multiple times as her butt slammed into the seat of the Rover. They were driving much faster heading out too, which didn’t help. Mike was doing his best to weave side to side to make the drive as smooth as possible, but there wasn’t much room to do it in, and even the best routes were skull shaking. At one point their lead truck took a wrong turn, and they had to back up a few hundred yards to reroute themselves.
Michelle leaned out the window of the shaking truck and looked up at the orange and grey orb of the moon hanging low in the sky. It seemed lifeless to her now. Almost like a passive witness, illuminating the world with no cares as to what happened below. For no reason she could tell, a random tear fell out of her eye and streaked down her cheek.
“What the fuck?” Mike muttered beside her.
Michelle snapped back to the real world and looked ahead. The truck leading them back to the village was accelerating away from them suddenly. The truck swung dangerously left, then right, then hit a rut or a boulder, and careened up onto two wheels. The driver lost control and the gasoline powered missile went off the road and impacted a thick tree. The front of the truck caved in and the three front passengers launched out of the truck and into the tree like human projectiles. Michelle watched their bodies snap and mangle against the ancient tree’s trunk and slide to the ground. The few people sitting in the bed of the truck were tossed like ragdolls high into the air, cart wheeling into the branches of the trees, coming down somewhere in the darkness of the jungle.
Mike slammed on the brakes and the Rover lurched to an awkward halt perhaps twenty feet from the wreck. “Fuck me!”
Michelle undid her seatbelt and jumped out of the car with him. They bolted down the road to the demolished truck and started looking for survivors. They found none. Every human form they came across was dead. Mike reared his head back and screamed into the jungle canopy. Silence answered him.
Michelle sat down in the middle of the trail and hung her head. She wrapped her arms around her body and rocked back and forth, trying to wrap her head around everything that had happened to her that night. She felt Mike’s hand on her shoulder, and that made her feel better. Then there was a crack in the woods ahead of them. It sounded as if a branch had been broken.
“Holy shit, someone survived.” Mike quickly left her side and headed towards the sound in the rainforest. She started to rise to join him when it struck her that the movement might not be coming from the living.
“Mike, wait, no!” She yelled out to him. He stopped in his tracks, just inches from the undergrowth and turned to her.
“Wha-?” His question was never finished. Bursting from the jungle was one of the passengers that had been tossed from the truck. His neck was bent sideways at an impossible angle, and his staved in face was a sneer of blind malice in the harsh headlamps of the Rover. He was stiff and slow, but with less than a foot to get on top of Mike, his limited speed was more than enough.
His teeth sank into Mike’s chest and Mike screamed out, shoving his attacker away, toppling him back into the forest. Mike stumbled backwards and fell into the rut strewn road. His wrist bent too far as he landed though, snapping it viciously. That sent out another scream.
Michelle panicked for a moment, unsure of whether or not she should defend Mike, or try and get him to his feet to make an escape. Suddenly she felt a presence behind her. She spun, coming face to face with another dead passenger. Mere inches from her face, the female zombie stood passively, staring at her with large, lifeless brown eyes. It didn’t attack her, it just stood there.
“Jesus Michelle, RUN! It’ll bite you!” Mike yelled as he tried to get to his feet, cradling his broken wrist. Michelle was frozen solid, staring at the waiting zombie just inches from her face. From behind her she heard Mike scream again, and she turned just in time to watch Mike get pounced on by the same zombie that’d just bitten him. They crashed to
the ground and Mike was pinned fatally in a tire rut. When she turned, the zombie that had frozen behind her pushed its way past, and stumbled towards her screaming partner. Just as the undead woman was about to dive onto Mike, she stopped again, and turned slowly to face Michelle.
With a tremendous, alien effort the zombie took a deep breath, forcing the unneeded air into her dead lungs. Michelle tasted the familiar metallic tang on her tongue as the temperature around her dropped suddenly. The dead woman channeled a voice to Michelle in scratchy, but familiar English;
“You will bear witness to either their redemption, or their failure Michelle Annabelle Lewis.”
Mike’s screams were drowned out by those words repeating over and over in her head.
January 13th
Progress has been made. Well, I think so at least. I decided after our luncheon meeting the other day that I really needed to spend time with Charles, so I made the decision to get him to hang out with me. Men need men time.
We got plastered with snow yesterday. We got a solid foot of thick, heavy stuff. It took me all damn morning to shovel out my doors and to make decent paths. I wound up grabbing the four wheeler and putting the little plow on it, and zipping around campus as fast as I could to clear out our sidewalks. It would figure if we were suddenly attacked by scavengers or zombies and had to wade through knee deep drifts. After that I got the maintenance plow and cleaned out the campus roads, and did a pass all the way up to Gilbert’s place on Prospect. He was shoveling his steps when I drove by. We waved. We’re so neighborly. Minus the zombies it’s like regular fucking sitcom around here.
I swung by Hall A yesterday around 11am in the hopes I’d get Chuck to come out with me. I wanted to try target practice with the new bow, and I just wanted a man-date. Charles was sitting at the table with Abby and they were chatting, and both of them agreed to come out with us. I was kinda hoping for a dude’s only session, but Abby is mostly dude by many criteria, so it was cool. Patty was napping and Randy was plugged into the Xbox as usual.
We wandered through the snow to the archery range, which I had forgotten to plow. Doy! I’m stupid. I dropped the bows with them, got the four wheeler, cleaned the range out a bit, and we got to our epic archery session.
Summation of said archery session: New bow is outstanding! Very accurate, very powerful. I am okay with it, Charles is okay with it, and Abby is actually very good with it. It’s a bit of a job for her to draw the string, but she’s actually damn good with the cheaper target bow I was using. I officially gifted that to her along with the arrows I was using. She seemed really pleased with that, as well as Charles. It didn’t feel as dangerous as giving her a gun, but I know I’ll sleep better knowing she’s capable of defending herself now.
We spent a few hours outside at the range, and wound up calling it quits when it started to snow again. Abby was cold, so she went inside, and I grabbed Chuck to do a ride along patrol of campus. He hadn’t been on one yet with me solo. I showed him things to look for, where to go, how to get around in the truck easiest, etc. He was definitely showing signs of anxiety though. Sitting slightly forward in his seat, rubbing his hands, nervous when I touched the Glock on my hip, etc. I definitely think he’s stressed out over the violence and whatnot. I’m sure he was an amazing provider and a great dad before everything went south, but now the status quo is different. He’s useless with his skill set. Judging from a few things he said I think he’s also suffering from a little inadequacy issues.
Spending the afternoon with him until dark did us both good. We joked, lightened it up, and I think Charles felt good on the patrol. He seemed comfortable, and I asked him if he’d feel comfortable with a handgun, and after 15 minutes of deliberation, he thought that’d be fine. We are going to opt for the Ruger P95 for him. We have “ample” 9mm now, and the Ruger has two clips, so he’ll have a spare mag for it. Plus 9mm is fairly low recoil, and it’s a decent gun for him. Sensibly the Sig is a better pistol but that’s MY 9mm. Call me greedy, but I’m hesitant to let him use it. We agreed we’d spend some range time so he could get used to the Ruger.
The rest of that night I relaxed. I actually slept well the last couple nights, which was super. No weird dreams either, which is pretty much the difference. If I have fucked up dreams, I don’t sleep well. Pretty simple. I never used to have bad dreams either. Ever since “that day” though, all bets are off. Everything is different now. I cleaned the weapons, went over the plan again for the runs downtown, and watched a few movies. Funny stuff to keep it light. I did a late evening patrol after the second snowfall stopped mostly to plow. I didn’t see anything when I was out, but I was nosy, and glanced in the Hall A windows to make sure everything was kosher, and it seemed that way. Randy and Abby were in the common room playing some board game together, and Patty and Chuck were at the table drinking coffee. Nice and serene. The picture of a happy post apocalyptic family. Hopefully things are getting better.
Early this morning Charles actually came to Hall E and hung with me. I was making myself some poor man’s breakfast via tin can, and he came in. He was nervous and excited about shooting the pistol, and while I ate, he asked a million questions. I let him handle the pistol as I ate (minus ammo) and he was definitely apprehensive at first, but as I talked about gun safety and basic firearms principles, he obviously became more comfortable. He hasn’t fired a gun since the shotgun spree when the Westfield folks came.
I took him out to a spot in the far back of campus near the staff housing buildings. There’s a flat stretch of road with a sudden bend that creates a decent place to shoot. I put some colored construction paper from the art room on the trees as targets, and we started shooting at about 15 feet. I’ve got spare holsters left over from my second trip to Moore’s and one fit the Ruger, so we started first on drawing techniques. I showed him how to pull the gun correctly, how to get the safety off at the right point in the draw, how to aim and target. All things that don’t require bullets. We did dry fire exercises for a bit, then I loaded a single round into the magazine for him, and we did live draw and fire drills in slow motion.
I’ll say this: as soon as a bullet went into the gun, he CLEARLY got nervous. I mean his hands were damn near shaking, and he got visibly more agitated. I told him we could bail, but he kept on. So he’d draw slowly, hit the safety slowly, aim slowly, and fire once. Reload, do it again. We did that until he could safely and smoothly draw and hit the paper at 15 feet. We took about 10 steps back to 25 feet, and did another handful in slow motion until he was safely and cleanly hitting the target.
We then loaded 2 rounds in at 15 feet, and had him draw and fire on two separate targets. I’m trying to drill into his head that slow and smooth is better than fast. We almost always have time to aim firing on zombies, so it makes no sense to panic if you’re at 15 feet. That’s like forever if a zombie is coming at you. Panic just makes you rush, and rushing makes you miss, and missing means you waste ammo. It took him a couple tries, but soon he was drawing and hitting both targets accurately enough for my needs.
As soon as Charles started to hit accurately, his demeanor changed. His confidence started to come back, he swagger returned (a little), and he even started to joke with me and mean it. I could just feel that he felt safer knowing how to shoot more accurately, and with my calm instructions, he was thinking slower, and smoother. And as we say, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
We did magazine swap drills for a few minutes, and he got to the point where he could swap them out really quickly and easily. I told him to practice that a LOT, because you cannot fuck that up if you need to swap mags. We’re also working on not leaving the mag on the ground. We need to save our clips, because we don’t have an endless supply. He said he’d practice at home. All in all I think we went through 40 rounds or so, which is a lot, but the practice was needed, our bonding was desperately overdue, and what it seems to have done to his mental state is invaluable. I loaded up his two magazines, and gave him an additional box of ammo
. He kept his holster and magazine pouch, and now he’s on duty as a pistol carrying cowboy. Motherfucker has been deputized. I hope he feels better. I’m still nervous.
After shooting practice, I told him I was going to the gas station to top off the gas cans I never refilled, and he immediately said he wanted to go. That’s great news, right? We hopped in the maintenance plow truck, and drove down, clearing Auburn Lake Road of snow on the way. Weirdly enough there was no line at the gas station, and we filled the cans up. Charles provided cover as I pumped.
As I was getting the last can topped off, Charles tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed silently to the far back yard of a house across the street. Just on the fringe of the back yard was a solid 10 point buck. A big, beautiful deer, filled with venison. Here we are with just handguns, and we’re really at max range. I snuck around to the front of the truck and grabbed the M15, but when I was about to line up the shot, the door of the truck creaked as a breeze came through, and the deer bolted into the woods.
Shit. I already had at least a three quarters boner over getting more venison. When was the last time I mentioned I loved venison Mr. Journal? It’s been at least a week, maybe more.
I love venison.
On the way back I told him that Gilbert and I were thinking a trip downtown was going to be necessary soon. I don’t know if it’s his new pistol giving him confidence, but he seemed really interested to hear the story. I told him the basic plan on the way back, and he helped me put the gas away as I told him more. He had some good points, which will be helpful as we follow through. He also seemed to totally agree that the trip was worth it, especially after I mentioned the grocery store roof, and the potential for so many more weapons up there. He seemed disinterested in the prospect of finding food. So funny how getting a gun changes your priorities. Noob gunfighters always want bigger guns. I’m satisfied with a .22 as long as my belly is full.
Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary) Page 10