by Morris, SJ
Chapter 11
We made it back to the house in just over three hours. It was one o’clock by the time we walked through the front gates, and we were all exhausted and starving.
Michael had fallen asleep in Tom’s arms shortly after we left the preschool and Tom carried him the whole way back.
Almost everyone from the house was out front when we walked in.
Michael woke up and was ecstatic to see some of his friends. He wiggled in Tom’s arms until he was put down and ran over to them, giving each of them a big hug. They were all delighted to see him, too.
Amelia started in immediately on how much fun it was to stay here at the cabin, that we had animals, and she wanted to show him around.
Allycia followed the kids into the house after she looked me over and made sure I was okay, which was kind of her.
Cooper’s Mom, Nicole, just seemed to stand still and take it all in. She turned to me and spoke softly, “You were ready for this, weren’t you? You knew something was going to happen, didn’t you?”
I started to explain, but told her it would probably be better if I showed her. It was hard for her to accept that someone knew this would happen and didn’t share that information with the rest of the world.
It took some convincing, but she finally understood why we all did what we did. Just as I was about to come clean about Cooper, my cell phone started to ring.
“Hello?”
“Abby, it’s Troy. I need help. I’m about an hour away from you, but I’m stuck with a flat tire, and there’s infected wandering around. I’ve stayed quiet, but they’re not going to not notice me forever. I don’t think I could get out of my car to get away or kill them without getting killed myself,” Troy’s voice was hushed but very worried.
“Okay, Troy. Stay calm. What’s around you? Do you know what cross street your near, or does your GPS have latitude and longitude? I think Chris has something that can find you with that.”
“Awesome. Yes, my GPS has that. Let me find it.”
“What’s around you? I may know where you are if you explain what you’re near.”
“Well, there’s an overturned pickup, and I think barbed wire in the road. I saw the wreck and tried to speed past it but didn’t see the wire until it was too late.”
“Aw shit. Sorry, Troy. I might have left that stuff on the road. The accident with the pickup wasn’t my fault, though, and I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of time to clear the road once we fixed the flat we got from the same wire.”
“Great. So, I assume you’re responsible for the dead guy with half his head missing in the middle of the road then?”
“Yep, that’d be me. If you turn around and look back at the truck, there should be another one with an arrow sticking through the top of his head. My son, Lance, took care of that one.”
“Well, I guess I’m glad I’m on my way to joining such a ruthless group. That is if I ever get to you guys.”
“You’ll get here, Troy. I’m looking for Chris right now so we can leave and come get you,” I said as I quietly excused myself from Nicole and ran after Chris.
“Thanks, Abby. I’m very lucky to have met you and your husband all those years ago.”
“Don’t start that crap. How many infected are around, and do they seem to know you’re there?”
“There’s about five or six, going back and forth from one side of the street to the other. They know I’m here, I think, but they can’t find me. I got my windows tinted a while ago, so they can’t see in my car, and as soon as the tire blew, I pulled off to the side of the road. I started to get out when I saw one of them walking out of the tree line across the street. I’ve been trying to make as little noise as possible and staying put.”
“Yeah, from my experience, they aren’t that good at finding prey with their eyes, but their hearing seems to be amazing, so they probably heard the tire blow. That’s why they came out and are hanging around.”
“Good to know.”
I found Chris and quickly told him what was going on. We were going to head out as soon as he gassed up the Jeep. It was a hardtop, military-issued, Jeep Wrangler, so it seemed reasonably safe. Plus, it looked pretty damn cool.
It was painted in tan camo and looked as fortified as any tank.
I found my kids and told them what was going on. Lance wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let him. I convinced him to stay behind telling him that I needed him to protect the cabin.
Dan was monitoring the cameras, as well as any news feeds from the television and Internet he could get. Dan was busy with all of that and documenting everything he could find, to keep a record of the outbreak. He was also, more importantly, looking for information about anyone finding a cure or more information about the infected, which may help us get through this mess.
Justin and Kristen were taking care of the kids, as well as getting the other newcomers settled and cleaned up, so I needed Lance to be the front line of defense if something happened. I also reminded him that he had to welcome all of the new arrivals that were on their way to us since, hopefully, they’d start showing up soon.
Allycia just shrugged her shoulders when I said I was going out again, told me to be safe, and kissed me goodbye. This reminded me that I needed to make time to sit and talk with my little girl. She seemed to be drifting away from me in all of this. I was lucky to have Chris’s daughter there for her, or she might have shut down entirely by now.
Tyler was more than happy to say goodbye to me. He was helping Dan with the cameras and monitoring the news coverage. Tyler enjoyed learning about all of Dan’s surveillance toys. I was worried he was seeing too much of what was going on, but I figured if he didn’t know as much as possible, it could possibly cost him his life someday.
This time out, Chris wanted to get me suited up with the same riot gear he had on since I’d insisted on putting myself in danger yet again.
Dan was more my body type, even though he was much taller than me. His chest and neck-guard, along with his helmet, were an okay fit. I had plenty of room to put the gear on over my leathers that I hadn’t even had a chance to take off since our first trip out today. I grabbed a few granola bars and some water bottles before heading out.
Chris and Tom were already outside, loading ammunition and tow-straps into the Jeep, just in case. They finished up, and we headed out to what was familiar territory for me.
The first twenty minutes of our ride was pretty quiet. We only saw a few infected wandering in and out of the tree line along the road, here and there. We stopped so that Tom could eliminate them, and it looked like Chris marked down the location of each of them in a notebook.
“Are you keeping track of where the infected are?”
“Yes, I’m recording the location of each of the infected we drop. I hope that at some point we can gather them together and burn the corpses. We can use the information to know how many we have... ugh... purged. Dan and Troy can also use the data to see how many are clustered in certain areas. I’m assuming they can do something with the info.”
“What is it that you’re recording, though? I always see you look at your watch and write something down.”
“It’s the latitude and longitude of the body. My watch is actually a multipurpose tracking tool. It’s got GPS, lat and long finder, as well as a compass doohickey. Dan made them and gave one to all of us when we arrived. It lets him track where we are, as long as the satellites are still up there. I’m guessing he still has some of his privileges from when he was in the military. If not, he’s still using them anyway.”
It made me feel better that Dan and the group at home could tell where we were at all times. I just hoped that he had a few more of those fancy watches so I could strap them to my kids.
It would be nice to be like, ‘Hey Dan, where are my kids?’ – ‘Oh, they are in the yard, see. Here are the coordinates.’ That’s every overprotective parent’s dream tool!
We’d finally come up to the gas station I pr
eviously left with two, no longer reanimated corpses, from the night of our arrival. There were two cop cars parked at the store, with their lights still flashing.
I was waiting to see what had happened after I left, and it appeared that the authorities were undoubtedly called, but where were they? I didn’t see anyone around, just the cars.
“Hey, Chris, slow up a little. This is the gas station where the two infected were the night we arrived, and there’re cop cars out front now.”
“So, this is the one you told us about? Why do you want me to slow up? Do you want to get out and tell the police that you shot those things and have them arrest you until they figure out what to do with you? I don’t think so.”
Chris sped up, and we passed the station without another word. I hadn’t thought about what kind of trouble I could be in for what I’d done. I forgot that the rest of society still didn’t really have a clue about what was really going on. Most people only knew others were biting each other, getting sick, and trying to eat people. I’m sure most didn’t even know what the hell to think about all of this yet.
As we drove by, I still didn’t see any police or anyone else walking around, and the door to the store was closed. I could only think that whatever happened had not ended well for the officers that responded. If they were in the store right now with that smell and the door closed, they were definitely not in good shape.
I made a mental note to ask Chris to stop on the way back to see if anyone needed help since I didn’t see anyone around, and I certainly wasn’t going to go inside and confess to killing anyone.
Chris seemed either very determined to get Troy or he was brooding angrily over something, so I wasn’t going to say anything until later.
After a few more miles and a few more notes of locations for truly dead, infected bodies, we came to a scene right out of a horror movie. There were at least thirty infected beating on what I assume was Troy’s Subaru and another dozen or so chasing after a man and a woman that were running on foot yelling and screaming away from the scene.
Chris skidded the Jeep to a stop.
He and Tom jumped out of the truck so fast; I didn’t even think we were in park yet.
Tom opened fire immediately on the longer-range targets, chasing the couple from the passenger side, and Chris began calmly walking towards the group of thirty, firing off headshots as he went.
I felt silly being there since I wasn’t helping at the moment, but I decided to get out and cover the rear.
I’m glad I did since as soon as I got out, I found two more infected, leaving the tree line in Chris’s blind spot.
I took out my gun, steadied myself, and fired off five rounds and took out both of my targets. Two-out-of-five headshots weren’t bad, considering the last time I shot a gun before this whole mess was at a non-moving paper target, almost three years ago.
Oddly enough, the paper target, as I recalled, was a zombie. Oh, the irony.
Chris turned immediately in my direction and smiled at my handiwork.
“Thanks. I am glad we brought you along!”
“No problem, I got your back!” I felt like we were in a movie filled with bad one-liners.
I checked the side over by Tom, and he was clear. The group that Chris had whittled down to ten finally realized there was food just behind them that wasn’t trapped in a car and began to come at us. They didn’t run, it was more of a power walk.
They all seemed to have various injuries of their own that kept them from moving very quickly. Some were walking on badly broken legs, and we’re talking open femur fractures, broken. It was nauseating to watch the bones move in and out of the pale skin as they hobbled along. Others had apparent gunshot wounds with blown-off shoulders, massive bite wounds, and bullet holes at center mass.
I was looking at the oncoming group as Chris was dropping them when his rifle suddenly stopped firing.
He ejected his empty magazine and looked up at me and back to the flesh-eaters with a, ‘Come on, I know you can help,’ look. I raised my gun once again, steadied myself, and began firing, picking one target at a time.
I forgot to keep track of my bullets, though, and before I knew it, I was pulling the trigger to find that a soft click was the only response. Thankfully, by the time I emptied my own clip, Chris had reloaded and continued taking out the approaching monsters. I looked over at Tom, and he was reloading too.
“Be right back. I’m going to go get the rest of them,” Tom said as he took off with surprising speed for a man of his size.
There were only three left chasing the couple, but it looked like they were gaining since the man and woman seemed to be getting tired. They’d finally stopped screaming, thank God. I just hoped that all the noise wasn’t going to bring every infected in the area to us.
Of course, I was wrong. Chris had just finished off the last infected by the car when another three came from the woods behind us. These were only recently turned because they were fast, and I could see that their eyes had little to no haze of death covering them.
They weren’t glossed over with the white film yet, which was frightening. It meant the infection was closer than I’d hoped it would be. We were, after all, only three days out from the viruses release overseas.
Their eyes were full of rage, and they were snarling as they broke out into a full sprint as soon as they saw us. I brought up my gun, forgetting I needed to reload. I yelled for Chris. He turned, and three silenced shots clipped the air seconds before three more bodies hit the ground, about ten feet from me.
“Next time, reload your magazine as soon as you’re out,” Chris said as he took my gun from me, pulled an extra clip from my belt, and reloaded it for me.
“I’ll remember that, thanks.”
I felt flush because of all the adrenaline from shooting these things and because Chris had touched me.
I was almost ashamed of how bad I wanted him to do it again and in a more intimate fashion instead of in the middle of shooting infected monsters who were trying to kill us. I rationalized with myself that a man hadn’t touched me since my husband died over two years ago, and I was also in an extremely high-stress situation. All that added together equals crazy thinking... right? Sure.
Chris turned back to the one final infected that was making its way towards us. One last silenced shot was made, and then, there were no more coming, at least, for now.
Noticing that the street was clear of infected, I looked towards where Tom had run and I didn’t see him, the couple he was trying to save, or the zombies he was trying to protect them from.
Chris looked at me and back at where Tom had run off to.
“Aw crap,” he muttered, hastily. Then he was off running, also.
I was beginning to think that Chris could read my mind.
I jumped back in the Jeep and pulled up to Chris, running down the road. I slowed enough so he could hop onto the foot rails and sped up to find Tom. We only drove a few minutes before we saw Tom walking towards the road, through a plowed field, with the couple next to him. They saw us pull up in front of them and stopped. They looked at Tom, and he just smiled. You could see the relief fill their faces as they realized that they didn’t have to run anymore.
Tom and our new friends made it to the Jeep and introduced themselves as Linda and Stephen Miller. They lived on the farm that was just across the field they had crossed to get to us. They were recently overrun by the infected at their home when they were working outside to fortify doors and windows.
They apparently had two lapdogs, Jacob and Ginger, that they refused to leave behind. They wanted to go back and get the dogs that were like children to them. I understood, but I was not about to risk my neck for two dogs.
Tom said he needed to refill his ammo from the Jeep but that he’d go with them to try and get their dogs back and any other possessions they would need. Then, they’d be moving in with us at the cabin.
I agreed quickly as I realized we’d left Troy behind in his car with
a mound of dead infected surrounding him and no cover. I didn’t like myself for leaving Troy behind without thinking. I was sure we were going to get back to his car just in time to see it mobbed with zombies again.
I told Tom to get what he needed quickly and reminded Chris that the person we came out here to save, we had just abandoned.
By the look on Chris’s face, he seemed like he hated himself for the hasty decision to run after Tom, leaving Troy, just as much as I did. Chris and Tom loaded up on ammo again. Tom set out with our new friends to their home, and Chris hopped back on the running boards, telling me to gun it back to Troy.
Surprisingly, we got back to Troy’s car, and he was milling about in the trunk of his car, moving stuff into the back seat. He was trying to get at the spare tire. He looked over his shoulder at us, approaching and threw his hands in the air.
We stopped and got out so we could get yelled at. We deserved it.
“What the hell kind of rescue was that? Thank you for getting rid of the infected but where the hell did you two go? I thought you’d left me for good!”
“Keep your voice down, buddy. Do you want to attract all of the other undead things around to our location? I’ve killed enough for one day, already,” Chris said as he walked over to Troy, motioning his hand for Troy to get out of the way.
“No way you’re touching my stuff, man. Everything I have in here is delicate equipment, and I don’t need you breaking it,” Troy sniped back in a much quieter tone.
“I’m Chris, by the way, one of the people that just saved your ass from this mess of ghouls that were about to rip you apart.”
“Sorry, Chris, nice to meet you in person, finally, and thanks for the ass-saving, but you still aren’t touching my stuff.”
“I hate to break up this man-on-man love-fest, but can we get your tire changed and get the hell out of here ASAP, please? I’d like to go check on Tom and make sure that he’s okay rescuing Spot and Fido.”
Troy looked at me sideways, “Spot and Fido?”