by Morris, SJ
“It’s a long story. Well, not really, but let’s worry about your tire right now.”
Troy seemed to finally realize who he was talking to, “Oh, my goodness, Abby! It’s so nice to see you again! I almost didn’t recognize you in that getup. I can’t believe you came out here with them. Aren’t there a bunch of military guys at the cabin you could have sent for me?”
Troy continued to move his equipment from the trunk, and Chris started working on getting the blown tire off as Troy and I talked quietly.
“There’s Chris, Tom, and Dan that are military. Justin was with Jack at the fire department. Along with the military wives, other than the few kids, and people we found so far, yesterday and today, that’s it for military personnel. Why? Is there supposed to be more?”
“Well, yeah. I also called a Liam Huntington, Benjamin Jackson, Ryan Owens, and Carson Whitmore.”
“Oh no. You did not call those assholes and tell them to meet up with us, did you? I was happy they didn’t show up when we started working on the cabin. Why the hell would you call them?” Chris looked up from his tire iron with a grim face as he questioned Troy.
“Jack told me to. I didn’t know those men, just as much as I didn’t know you. I guess they got held up, or maybe worse.”
“Or worse is what I’m hoping for, sorry to say. That group is not one we’d want back at the cabin; I can tell you that much. I’m surprised Jack would even want those assholes in the same state as his wife and kids, let alone the same house.”
“What do you mean, Chris? Why would Jack not want these men to help us?” I was a little upset that Chris was questioning anything my husband had done. Especially since his actions so far got us all to a safe place we could defend and help others while the world was falling apart around us.
“Well, these guys were on some of Jack’s special ops missions. He told me that whenever they accompanied his team on a mission that the four men would disappear about four hours before evacuation. When questioned, they always said they had another directive within the mission and couldn’t share the details. Jack was always suspicious of those guys, so when I got to work with them one time and they disappeared, I followed them. They were doing some not so nice things with some not so legally aged girls. They were given a package from the group of girls, which I suspected was their main mission. The things they did with the girls after they got their package though were disgusting. It was a cross between torture and rape. They enjoyed what they did with them, too. I saw it in their faces. The government can be fucked up, but I’ll tell you right now, the things I watched them do was not part of any sanctioned mission. I don’t know if they left the girls alive or not because as soon as it seemed like they had their fill, I left so they wouldn’t find me. I didn’t hear any gunfire, but it’s hard to hear suppressed shots when you’re hauling ass through the jungle,” Chris threw the destroyed tire off to the side of the road as he finished his story.
I was dumbfounded at what I just heard and to now know that these men, no these monsters, knew where we were, where our families were.
“You don’t think they’ll come after us, do you?” I asked.
“I certainly hope not, Abby. If so, they’re not going to get a warm welcome from me. Did Jack say why he wanted these men to be told about the cabin?”
Troy closed his mouth and finally answered, “No, he just gave me a list of names and numbers to reach people at. He did make sure that those guys were not called to help with the renovations you all did last year and that when the shit hit the fan, they were the last to be called. I didn’t really find that suspicious until now. Maybe he was thinking they’d be good for hunting the infected, like hired muscle, maybe?”
“Whatever Jack’s reasoning was, if these guys show up, I would suggest that we keep a close eye on them and not let them anywhere near the girls if we let them in at all,” Chris said this and looked straight into my eyes. The anger I saw in them was palpable.
I knew he was now not only worried about keeping his daughter, my daughter, and me safe from zombies. He was now also concerned about the horrible side of men who knew where we were. Men like them were the whole reason for the underground apartments. This worried me on a whole new level since we’d just left the cabin unattended to get Troy.
Sure, Dan was there with Justin, but what could they do against what was possibly four or more well-armed and well-trained mercenaries? Who knows how many of their friends they told of our sanctuary if they were still alive?
With my mind working on overdrive on all of the terrible possibilities, I now shared in Chris’s awful hope that those men never made it through the initial outbreak and that they were all dead.
We let the conversation die where it was, and Troy moved enough of his stuff out of the trunk to get to the spare. Chris put it on quickly. Just as he was finishing, we heard an explosion coming from the direction we knew Tom to be.
Chris and I rushed to the Jeep, and Chris peeled away, headed for the farmhouse as Troy tried to keep up in his car. As we got closer, we saw a massive plume of black smoke rising from the farmhouse in the distance. Tom and the couple were running through the field, away from the home, now fully engulfed in flames.
It looked like Linda had a pet carrier in each hand, and Steven was holding a carry-on sized suitcase with clothes still falling out of it. Tom was behind them, turning and shooting towards the fire, and at what I could now tell was about ten infected.
Some infected were on fire but still jogging towards the promise of food. Chris told me to hold on and cut the wheel from the dirt driveway we were traveling on so that he could intersect our running friends.
I was glad to see Troy stopped his car at the end of the driveway. I didn’t want to worry about trying to fix another flat after that explosion, especially since it was bound to draw every infected for miles around.
Chris yelled at me to drive, and he jumped out. I hopped into the driver’s seat as Chris ran past the couple and helped Tom take out the remaining zombies that were giving chase.
Linda and Steven made it to the Jeep, threw their stuff in the back, and jumped in themselves. They were panting heavily as I handed each of them a bottle of water.
They moved over to make room for Tom since he was hauling ass towards the back door. He and Chris jumped in, and I slammed on the gas, pulling us around in the field to get back to the dirt driveway and to the road. Troy followed quickly behind us, and we were finally on our way back to the cabin.
We left with three, and we’re going home with six, seven if you count each dog as half a person, but these weren’t real dogs, they were just lapdogs. Lilly might be small, but she was useful to have around, at least. These two seemed to only know how to be pet and taken care of.
Ah well, no matter how you looked at it, it was still an excellent start to our little band of survivors for the zombie apocalypse.
I would have expected to come home with fewer numbers than we left with when all of this started, but now, I was confident that we’d all survive this.
The only remaining question was exactly how far my confidence was going to get us.
Chapter 12
We drove mostly in silence, except for the panting of the two foo-foo dogs in the back and the cooing noises that Linda and Tom were making at them.
Yes, I said Tom. He was all, ‘Who’s a good puppy? You want your belly rubbed?’
It almost made me sick, but I was happy to see Tom as a gentle giant. Everyone has quirks, right? Tom had animals and kids.
It was funny to look over at Chris and see him shaking his head every time Tom did the stupid baby voice to the dogs. Linda loved that she found someone else who shared such adoration for her fur babies. She had an ear-to-ear grin, but I couldn’t tell if it was because she had someone else ogling over her dogs, or if she knew that she was on her way somewhere safe with her little family.
I would have guessed it was a little of both. Steven just slept. I presumed he hadn
’t gotten much of that in the last few days, so we’d have to wait to ask him what happened to them before we ran into each other.
We were pulling up to the gas station, and I slowed down a little. I had been keeping the Jeep at a steady forty miles-per-hour since we left the farmhouse and the barbed wire mess in the road where we picked up Troy. I only slowed to about thirty-eight miles-per-hour, and Chris looked over at me instantly.
“What do you think you’re doing? I told you we’re not stopping here to get into more of a mess.”
“I just want to see if anyone needs help. If the same two police cars are there and no one’s around, I want to check it out to make sure that no one else is in trouble.”
“You haven’t had enough action for one day?”
“I most certainly have, but if the cops that came in those cars are still around and need help, I think we should help them.”
“They are police officers, Abby. They have guns, and they can protect themselves.”
“If they do need help, them having guns and some training is exactly why we should help them. If those four assholes you told us about before show up at our doorstep, the more trained and armed people we have on our side, the better.”
Chris shook his head at me, “Well when you put it that way, I guess I agree. Let’s stop and see if they need help.”
I looked at Tom in the rearview mirror and his facial expression told me he was slightly confused. He finally spoke up as I stopped at the entrance to the gas station.
“What four assholes are you guys talking about?” Tom said with a raised eyebrow. I was going to let Chris take this one. I was not about to get myself all worked up before taking a peek around for more infected or scared police officers.
Chris took a deep breath, “Well, do you remember I told you about those four guys I worked with in Columbia? The ones that hurt the little girls?”
Tom’s brows furrowed instantly, “Yes...”
“Well, apparently, Jack gave Troy their names and phone numbers to call if something happened, and Troy called them.”
“If what you said is true and those mother fuckers show up at our compound, I will personally take each one of them out. Why the fuck would Jack have them join us?”
I had only known Tom for a few days, but I would never have imagined he could get this mad, this quickly. He was a very dark-skinned black man, but he was genuinely turning red with anger.
“Calm down there, buddy. They haven’t shown up yet, and if they do, we’ll be ready for them, okay?”
Chris’s words seemed to calm down our angry giant for the time being. Just as I thought we’d pacified the mood in the car, Linda started screaming and pointing out of the windshield. We all looked, and sure enough, there was an infected heading right for the Jeep. This zombie was an excessively large woman with one arm attached, and the other ripped off at the shoulder. She was wearing a bright pink moo-moo. Of all the things to die in, this had to be the worst.
I would have screamed if she were coming at me. Even if she wasn’t dead.
“Linda, you have to stop screaming. We’re safe where we are. There’s only one so far, and she’s moving very slowly, so she’ll be easy to take out,” Chris said as he grabbed the hand she was pointing with.
This quieted Linda and Chris got out of the Jeep. He was reticent and slow with his movements as to not gain the attention of any additional infected that might be in the area. He didn’t leave the side of the Jeep as he aimed and fired one quiet shot into the large woman’s forehead right between her eyes. She went down with almost no sound other than a soft thump since she had so much padding.
A solid win for the good guys, I’ll take it.
Tom climbed out of the back slowly and went around, standing next to Chris. They whispered something to each other I couldn’t hear, and Chris disappeared into the woods, next to the station. Tom came over to my window and told me to stay put and keep the truck closed up. He and Chris were going to clear the surrounding area, and then they were going to check the store. I was to stay in the truck, protect our new friends, at all costs, and not open the doors for anyone other than him, or Chris. I nodded in understanding while Tom jogged off and disappeared into the woods across the street from the station.
Everything was quiet, and soon, Tom and Chris reappeared from the woods, closer to the store. Chris gave me the okay sign, and they crept against the wall, leading to the store’s front door, which was covered in dried blood from my previous encounter there a few days ago.
I saw Tom run up to the police cruisers that still had their lights flashing. He turned off the wigwags and the overhead light bars. He came out of the second car with a smile and a new shotgun in-hand.
After he briefly checked the weapon, he placed it behind him in his pack and went back to the door with Chris. Chris opened the door slowly, looking up to make sure and grab the bells that would have announced their entry before they both slowly disappeared. I guess someone had moved the body of the infected I’d killed since they walked right in without having to step over what I remembered to be left of him.
I looked in my rearview mirror, and I could see Troy sticking his head out of his window, trying to get my attention. I looked around and didn’t see any threats, so I rolled my window down and leaned out of the Jeep.
“What’s up, Troy?” I said a little louder than a whisper.
“What the hell is going on? Do we need gas? Why are we stopped here?”
“We’re trying to see if there’s anyone here that might need help. Just be quiet, roll up your window, and stay in the car.”
With that, I ended the conversation by sticking my head back in and closing my window. I may have had a lot of things that I wanted to talk to Troy about, but now was not the best of times to start our conversation.
The total silence in the car and not knowing what was going on inside the store with Chris and Tom was agonizing.
I couldn’t see anything through the dried blood on the door, and there were too many posters covering the rest of the windows to have even a limited line of sight through the glass. However, just as I was about to get out of the truck, against my better judgment, there was a huge crash from inside the store.
I heard someone scream, but it didn’t sound like Chris or Tom. I had my hand on the door handle when Tom stumbled out the front of the store. He was practically carrying a dark-skinned woman wearing a police uniform. She was bleeding from the head and appeared to be going in and out of consciousness as Tom helped her toward the Jeep.
I got out to assist him getting her to the car and turned to see Chris coming out of the store, which filled me with relief. He didn’t seem worried that there were any threats left inside the store, and that made me relax even more.
“She hasn’t been shot or bitten, as far as I can tell. I hit her in the head with the door as I kicked it in, looking for infected,” Tom seemed upset at what he’d done to the poor woman.
We got her steadied on the hood of the Jeep and I got a bottle of water to wash away the blood on her face. As I poured, she seemed to come to a little more.
“Barry, get Barry... he needs help out there.”
“Ma’am, you aren’t making any sense. Who is Barry, and where is he? We’re outside in the parking lot right now.” Tom tried to get the woman to focus on him while he talked to her, but she was pretty out of it.
“He’s out there... partner... he tried to follow me... didn’t make it in... still... outside... Barry.”
Chris overheard the woman and began another look around the outside of the building. He was whispering the name Barry, telling the air that it was safe to come out and that his partner was okay. He got to the back corner of the building where the bathroom door and garbage dumpster was, and froze.
I bet that was an excellent combination of smells in the summer, hot garbage, and gas station bathroom. No wonder that kid the other night was so excited to get the door open from the bathroom and yell at the, now d
eparted, Curtis, for still not fixing it.
Chris stopped suddenly in front of the dumpsters and backed away from it with his gun pointed at the flip-top lid. He whispered something, but he was too far away for me to tell what it was. After a few seconds, which felt like hours, the black lid started to rise slowly.
“Keep both hands up and on the lid, please. Make no sudden movements, and I’ll help get you out of there,” Chris said a little louder, with his gun still trained on what or whoever was coming out.
A man in his early forties, if I had to guess, in the same policeman’s uniform as our new, half-conscious friend slowly emerged.
Chris, seeing that the man was unarmed, not infected, as far as he could tell, and an officer, he dropped his gun to his side and held out his hand to help the man out of the dumpster.
Now, with the lid open, I could smell the disgusting mix of decay and old food. The stench was almost as putrid as the smell of the infected. That poor officer was trapped in that dumpster with the lid closed for God only knew how long.
Now, I felt like shit for not making Chris stop when we passed by earlier. He was as white as a sheet of paper and had dried vomit all over the front of his uniform. As soon as Chris had him out of the dumpster, he backed away quickly from what used to be his own personal hell on earth. He looked at the dumpster as if something was going to come out of it and attack us.
I yelled over to them, “Hey Chris, peek inside and see if there’s anyone else in there. He looks pretty freaked out like there might still be something inside.”
“Awesome idea, Abby. Let me just open that shit dump again, I missed the smell.”
“Hilarious, Chris, just look inside!”
Chris pulled his rifle back into position at the dumpster and reached out to open the lid. He looked over at the man he just pulled out of it who was shaking with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Chris lifted the lid slowly again and peeked his head over the edge. He made an awful face and let the top close as quietly as possible with him stepping away and grabbing the unmoving officer by the arm and walking him in our direction.