Chapter 3
Shelly Smith grew up in Jackson, New Hampshire. The youngest of three children and the only girl in a low-income family, she entertained herself by playing with her older brothers’ hand-me-down toys: action figures, train sets, robots that spoke in electronic voices—what Shelly referred to as ‘boy’ toys.
Her brothers, Timmy and Glen, were athletes. Baseball was both boys’ passion and with a shortage of girls her age in the neighborhood, she grew up a tomboy by default. She had to pick up a bat and a glove if she wanted to spend time with any kids her own age.
They played most of their games after school on a Little League field behind the only church in town. West Ossipee had little budget for grounds keeping and the outfield had long ago turned brown. The infield was mostly dirt but had become invaded by weeds over the years. The base paths were still somewhat distinguishable and the kids would bring objects from home—paint can lids, beach towels—to serve as bases.
Shelly was the youngest player on the field, and the only girl. As a result, she was routinely the last one picked. She also wasn't the most welcome due to her gender, but since there was often an odd number of boys, she at least helped even out the teams.
"Go easy on her," her brothers would say whenever she was at bat.
The other boys hated pitching to her. Shelly’s at-bats represented a no-win situation: either throw hard and strike her out and face the invariable taunts from the other boys: “Oh, you're a tough guy, striking out a little girl," or allow a walk or a soft base hit and receive a different kind of teasing: “Nice job! You can't even get the chick out!"
For the most part, the only time she ever got on base was when a boy from the opposing team would ‘accidentally’ commit an error on the field. She soon caught on to this behavior and vowed to change the boys’ collective perception of her.
She took some time away from the playing field and practiced throwing at a nearby tennis court. She found a used tennis ball, cut a small slit into it, filled the ball with pennies and repeatedly threw it against the fence surrounding the court. The first time she did it, her arm hurt after six throws.
Six weeks later, she was making a hundred throws without breaking a sweat.
When winter came along, she convinced her father to take her to an indoor batting cage so she could practice her swing. Her father had not been oblivious to what had been going on at the baseball field, but instead of reprimanding the boys for treating her how they did, he chose to maintain a comfortable distance and allow his daughter to find her own way. When she finally came to him for help, however, he was only happy to assist.
They went to the batting cage once every week. They never told her brothers where they were going and, more often than not, they never needed to. Timmy and Glen were usually off sledding with their friends or watching movies indoors. They never once considered their little sister was secretly having her own ‘spring training,’ getting ready to play ball with the boys again once the nicer weather arrived.
Her father would have her start by taking twenty swings in the slow-pitch cage. Then he would move her to another cage so she could see different speeds, which taught her how to track the ball well. He taught her how to hit to every field. Soon, she was picking her spots in the cage, waiting on pitches, and either hitting line drives or ground balls, depending on how the ball came in and how she wanted to hit it.
When spring arrived, she had long since conquered the slow-pitch cage and her timing had caught up with the forty-miles-per-hour cage. That day in April, when the mercury reached sixty degrees for the first time, she was ready.
In her first at-bat, she deposited one of the boys' best fastballs on the other side of the left field fence. After that, she was never again the last one picked.
As the years went by and Shelly grew into her teens, the boys on the field began to notice something different about her: she was no longer the same awkward, tomboy girl who came to play ball every day after school. She had earned her reputation as a standout player on the high school girls’ softball team, but she was no longer simply the Smith brothers’ kid sister with the messy, dirty-blonde hair under the beat-up Portland Sea Dogs cap who might otherwise have been mistaken for another boy.
At sixteen, she was just as tall as many of the boys and her long golden locks flowed beautifully into the ponytail tucked under and through the snap in the back of her cap, exposing her perfectly toned neck and shoulder muscles. The demands of the softball team and the long games of pick-up baseball helped to keep her in top physical shape; the definition in her thighs was immediately noticeable any time she ran, even in a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants. And although she wore a sports bra when she played, genetics had given her early and full development. It was difficult for the boys to keep from staring at her curves whenever she stretched before and after games.
However, it certainly wasn’t too difficult for the boys to abstain from making any lewd comments about her around her older brothers. The other boys knew better than to openly gawk at her in front of Timmy and Glen or to ask them about her ‘availability.’ They were very protective of their younger sister, and the rest of the kids knew Shelly was off-limits, but that did not stop them from paying attention.
One boy who paid close attention was Robert Verhoeven.
***
Robert and Shelly each carried a black contractor trash bag. Robert’s plan was for them to move through the hut and deposit anything that looked like evidence of human life into the bags.
The Silver Lake Hut, a hikers’ lodge made up of two long hallways, which were the sleeping quarters, joined by a large, central common area, had been the origin of the most recent zombie outbreak. The dead had roamed its rooms and halls not long ago, killing almost every living person as they slept in their bunks. When the living eventually turned into zombies themselves and the search for live human flesh inside the hut failed to bear further fruit, the dead continued their search outdoors on the mountain.
Standing in the middle of the common room, Shelly was unable to move.
The sight had been overwhelming. She had expected to discover a horrific scene and in her mind, she had pictured many different things, but the reality was much worse than anything she had imagined. It was the kind of setting one normally saw while watching a low-budget slasher movie late at night, except this was different. The gore here was not of the manufactured kind presented for gross effect, but rather, the real kind. The human kind.
Signs of struggle were everywhere: overturned chairs, shredded clothing, flipped-over mattresses, torn sheets, and hand-held weapons lay as if strewn about during moments of desperation and panic. Signs of death were even more apparent in the bedrooms. Small appendages, ripped-out hair, broken teeth, and pieces of flesh stuck to carpeted areas. Blood smeared and splattered on the walls and windows and collected into large pools on the floors.
The smell was nearly unbearable. A thick rot hung in the air and floated through the entire hut. Shelly likened it to the odor produced by road kill that had lain for days in a hot sun and been picked at by bugs, birds and other scavengers. She wondered how the woman who met them at the door had withstood it.
Shelly pulled the sides of the bag apart and looked down at the evidence she had already collected, and couldn’t understand how they were going to hide all of it.
Why did they need to hide it? Why couldn’t the rest of the world know what happened? What was the point of perpetuating this secret?
She looked around the room somewhat absently. She wasn’t really trying to find something, but simply searching for motivation to move from where she currently stood. When she couldn’t find any, Shelly opened the bag once more and reached inside. She pulled out a small book. She had found it sitting beneath one of the tables in the dining area after she and Robert had arrived, after that woman who had been alone in the hut for only God knows how long had left.
Shelly knew the moment she saw the woman that she had likely exp
erienced something neither she nor Robert would ever be able to fully comprehend. The look on the woman’s face—vacant, bewildered—had spoken words Shelly heard only in her mind.
…I’ve seen hell…
To Shelly, the woman had given the appearance of someone who was close to giving up.
Is that what suicidal looks like? Shelly mused.
Maybe she was once vibrant and had a love for life? Maybe she had a partner? Maybe she had a family somewhere in the northeast and wanted to get back to them? Or maybe she was simply a lost soul trying to find meaning in her life on top of one of the most beautiful places in the world during a dead, apocalyptic nightmare?
Shelly set the bag on the floor and began to flip through the pages of the book.
Chapter 4
Grace and Charlie Nixon enjoyed a shared love of the outdoors and the dream of one day summiting the tallest peak in each of the fifty United States. A pair of mutual ‘Highpointers,’ they had completed several smaller mountains including those in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but their quest began in earnest five years ago when they first arrived at Mt. George.
Standing at 6,288 feet, Mt. George is the tallest mountain in the northeastern United States. Part of the Presidential Range, it stands as a symbol of conquest for adventurers willing to engage some of the most perilous and unpredictable weather patterns in the world.
Three seasons out of the year, a tour company leads visitors to the summit by van via the peak’s winding eight-mile access road. Those brave enough to drive their personal vehicles may do so at their own risk; along with weather-related challenges, gravity also presents a unique threat. Aging brake pads and discs are no match for the seemingly never-ending descent back down to the base. Each year more than a few over-ambitious motorists have pitched their cars, trucks, and motorcycles clean off the access road and into the mountain's unforgiving landscape, leaving themselves stranded until assistance can reach them.
The mountain also offers rides to the summit along an old-fashioned, biodiesel-powered cog railway. Passengers can enjoy a leisurely stroll up the western face by train while taking in the beautiful scenery and simply relaxing for the near-one-hour trek to the top.
There is no shortage of foot traffic along the peak's challenging and labyrinthine trail system. Lives have been gambled and lost along the mountain's steepest of trails, Edward’s Ravine, a trail mostly hidden from the sun, which records snowfall twelve months out of the year and, as a result, is often closed to the public.
Grace and Charlie were already experienced hikers when they arrived five years ago, but even the most accomplished climbers can, and often do, succumb to the mountain’s wicked and unpredictable nature. Their journey was cut short halfway up the mountain when Charlie’s knee buckled and he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. It would be six months before he was able to walk on it again without assistance, and a full year before he was able to engage in any aggressive activity like running or hiking.
Four years later, his confidence finally returned. Unfortunately for the both of them, it returned at the worst possible time…
***
Grace lingered at the edge of the cliff. The sun was new—a morning sun—and it gently warmed her forehead and her chocolate-colored hair as she stared down at boots soiled with dried blood that had long since cracked and turned an unpleasant shade of brown. She wondered if the people who came to the hut had noticed her boots, too, and if they had been put off by the sight of blood.
Oh well…they haven’t seen what I’ve seen.
She reached a flat part of the trail and her legs trembled with fatigue after having spent the last half hour negotiating a precariously steep and rocky decline. The flat stretch was a welcome break, but she knew the hike would soon get much worse.
She rested an open palm against a skinny birch tree. It was cool to the touch having not yet been warmed by the sun, and Grace silently reflected on how much horror and bloodshed this little tree had likely seen in recent days.
Perhaps not nearly as much as she herself.
Had it really been that long since Grace and Charlie arrived at the mountain? She could not remember. The emotional scars sustained over that time had precluded her from being able to distinguish the days from each other. It felt like one long day, the beginning and end of which having blurred nightmarishly with all the others.
Time seemingly stopped the moment Charlie died.
Charlie. Her soul mate.
Why, Charlie? Why did you have to leave me?
It felt like an eternity had passed since Grace said goodbye to him at the summit. He was the only man she ever truly loved. The man with whom she vowed to live until death parted them.
She leaned over and sobbed hard until she wretched, but nothing reached her lips. She could not remember the last time she ate or drank water. Surely she had something to eat the day before, but she could not remember what or how much.
Right now her legs ached and shook, and her muscles were weak, and she had to remind herself repeatedly why she continued: the decision to reach the summit had been Charlie’s. He felt it was their best option of finding transportation and getting off the mountain alive. When the plan failed, his final wish was for her to survive. He did not want his death to be in vain, and he begged Grace to get down the mountain safely and to tell others.
She promised him she would try.
Then she left him bleeding and dying, and she ran away scared and alone as the zombies came for her.
Chapter 5
Robert Verhoeven was close friends with Timmy and Glen Smith. He was a year older than Shelly, the same age as Glen, and two years younger than Timmy. When not on the baseball field, Robert could often be found at the Smiths’ residence playing cops-and-robbers, Star Wars, and G.I. Joe with the two boys. Like Timmy and Glen, Robert didn’t pay much attention to Shelly when he visited the Smith home.
As the three boys grew into young men and lost interest in many of the things they enjoyed as children, they gained an interest in the fairer sex. This was the same with their friends; most of the boys on the baseball field had long ago begun to take notice of Shelly’s maturation into a young woman. Whispers and giggles, along with a general curiosity about Shelly’s relative interest in boys, were shared on and off the field, so long as Timmy and Glen were not within earshot. And while the two brothers had their own hormonal surges and imbalances with which to wrestle, they were not oblivious. They knew there was a large amount of attraction toward their younger sister, but they were highly respected and nobody ever spoke indecently of Shelly around them.
That is why it made Robert feel as if he were walking on air the day Timmy said, “If there’s any guy who we’d trust to date our sister, it’s you.”
Glen agreed.
Robert was initially coy about it, and claimed he did not look at Shelly in that way, only as another one of the players on the field. Timmy and Glen knew better.
“Everybody looks at her that way,” Glen said. “We’re not blind. We’ve seen you and the others checking her out. It’s fine, though. She can take care of herself. But like Timmy said, you’re the only one we trust not to do anything stupid.”
Robert eventually relented enough to thank them for their blessing but continued to maintain he was not interested in Shelly romantically. For now.
As young adults, Robert and Shelly communicated more often than they did as children, but conversations were still infrequent, and only on the field when it was baseball-related. Inside the Smith home, he didn’t speak or interact with her much; she had her own friends by now and it required less effort on his part to try to remain ‘uninterested.’ The distance he maintained, however, allowed him to keep a closer eye on the other boys.
He was able to find out who else was interested in Shelly, and if that boy had asked her out, and what had been the outcome. He would also hear from mutual friends about whether she had taken a liking toward any other boys and, to his relief
, she had not.
Eventually, she became his obsession. He didn’t want Shelly to be with any other boy. He didn’t want anyone else to take her to the movies, to hold her hand, or to go to the school dance with her. He wasn’t aware of what Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s stance was with regard to Shelly dating, but he knew she was too pretty not to be courted by someone soon. Every day he didn’t talk to her was another missed opportunity, another day closer to when she would find a boyfriend. And for Robert, that day felt dangerously close.
Soon, he was unable to contain his feelings any longer and after a game one day, he approached her.
He stalled on the field while most of the other boys gathered their equipment and left. Some of the boys were old enough to drive and were already gone, but those not yet of age still had to walk home.
Shelly sat on one of the only patches of grass near first base and did some post-game stretching. Robert eventually started to walk home with the few remaining boys left, but when he determined they were a comfortable distance away from the field, he lied about leaving behind his batting gloves and that he would have to go back. He insisted they not wait for him and he would make his way home.
As he walked back toward the field, Shelly continued to stretch on the grass. Her back was to him, and Robert stared in awe as she gracefully extended her arms up and over one leg, grabbed her foot and held the position. Her white-and-green ringer t-shirt pulled up a bit on the opposite side, exposing the skin of her lower back. It wasn’t the first time Robert had seen this. Shelly always stretched before and after games, but it was the first time he had ever seen her without any of the other boys around. It was innocent, harmless, and incredibly sexy at the same time.
Robert dragged his feet roughly over some loose dirt, purposely making enough noise so as to alert her to his presence. She heard this and her eyes drifted behind her, wanting to see who was coming back to the field.
Dead Summit: Containment Page 2