Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  Kyle had at least three infected behind him and would almost certainly pick up some more before he got to the prison.

  His left turn was just up ahead past the city government’s maintenance shop. A pack of six infected stood stock still in the middle of the intersection he needed, so he had three options. Turn early, swerve around them and turn late, or run them over.

  Kyle turned early, on 3rd instead of on 2nd, and found that almost a dozen of them lurked in the street up ahead.

  He slammed on the brakes. It was not a smart move, but he hadn’t thought it through. His lizard brain made him stop. There is no such thing as fight or flight mode. The real mode for humans and animals in a fear state is fight, flight or freeze.

  And he froze.

  The infected ahead of him froze too for a moment, as if they weren’t entirely sure what was happening and what they were looking at. One of them was a girl who appeared to be around eight. Her mouth was covered in blood. So was her arm. Kyle guessed someone had bitten her arm and wondered if one or two of the others were her parents and, if so, who bit who first.

  Something slammed hard into the back of the van and dark figures appeared in each passenger window.

  The infected from the intersection had followed him down the street.

  Kyle jammed the gear stick into reverse and stepped on the gas.

  He hit one with the rear of the van and kept going, even when he felt one of them under the tires on the right side as if he’d just ran over a huge dog.

  Kyle checked the rearview mirror and saw nothing behind him but darkness. His headlights illuminated the way in front of him, not behind, and he felt like he couldn’t check his surroundings as well in Andy’s panel van as he could in a regular car. He might crash into just about anything if he wasn’t careful.

  More than a dozen figures loomed ahead of him and one lay motionless in the street atop a checkboard of road surgery. Kyle could tell they were infected by the way they moved. There was just something off about their body language, as if their joints were slightly more flexible and their bodies more comfortable in awkward positions. He wondered what on earth was going on with them physiologically.

  They all came toward him, but Kyle kept moving in reverse until they were a comfortable hundred feet away. He turned around in his seat and looked behind him through the windows at the back of the van. The intersection wasn’t far and there were no infected and no parked cars in his way, so he exhaled slowly, kept the van in reverse, and made his way backwards toward the intersection where he could safely and quickly crank the wheel and get back on the road to the prison.

  An unseen infected slammed into the left side of the van and Kyle’s adrenaline exploded.

  One of them screamed just behind him to the left. He checked the side view mirror. It was the woman he’d passed near the motel a few minutes earlier.

  He turned the wheel hard and stepped on the gas, hitting her again while backing up and turning as he straightened himself out on Main. The way before him was clear, so he put the van in first gear and stepped on the gas.

  His heart raced and he breathed heavily. He could find himself surrounded by a whole pack of those things when he arrived at the prison, and then he’d have to get out of the van.

  So he came up with a plan as he swerved around six of them and made a left onto 3rd Street.

  Two infected ambled together on the sidewalk off to his right. Kyle knew without checking the mirror that they’d follow him, and even though the prison was just a few blocks ahead they would not be a problem.

  Rather than speeding up to get away from them, he slowed to five miles an hour so that they would stay on him. He wanted the infected to come now—as many of them as possible within a couple blocks of the prison.

  They came from every direction, and they didn’t run. As long he kept his speed down, they walked as if they were curious rather than agitated.

  He saw two behind him in the sideview mirror on the sidewalk, one off to the left approaching from a side street, and two more shamblers dead ahead on the right.

  He scrutinized the periphery in case a pack ran at him from somebody’s yard. He passed one house with a scorched porch and another with a shattered front window, the living room curtains billowing and a dead woman with her left leg chewed down to nothing but bone all the way up to her knee. An abandoned car up ahead on the right had crashed into a now-leaning telephone pole and accordioned its grill.

  The jail finally appeared on his right, a two-story brick building with a sign on a plinth out front that read Fremont County Sherriff’s Department and Detention Center. There were no cars in the lot, no guards out front, no infected outside. The lights were off. The site seemed abandoned.

  Kyle wondered if anyone was actually in there, if Parker was still locked up or if the guards had shot everyone on their way out. If people were still alive inside—and as long as there were no guards—Kyle doubted he’d have much trouble freeing them. If he couldn’t find a set of keys to the cells, he’d knock down a wall with the van and hope he didn’t kill someone in the process.

  He slowly swerved around two infected ahead of him in the road, and when he did, one of them screamed. It had caught a glimpse of Kyle’s face through the passenger side window. And when one of them screamed, all of them screamed and ran after the van.

  Kyle wasn’t worried. He stepped up the pace to ten miles an hour and they faded into the darkness behind him.

  He drove around the prison twice, alternating between five and ten miles an hour, and must have had thirty or forty infected in tow. Then he drove back toward Main at five miles an hour to lead them away.

  Kyle realized then that he didn’t want to free Parker just because he needed a survival buddy. He actually missed the bastard and hoped Parker was okay, and he felt a deep sense of remorse that Parker wouldn’t even be locked up in the first place if Kyle hadn’t been such a shit. His stomach felt hard as a gourd and ready to heave at the same time.

  He reached Main Street again and caught glimpses of the infected behind him in the rearview when they got close enough for his tail lights to illuminate them. He saw infected men, women and children, some with blood on their hands and their limbs, others with blood on their faces. At least two looked like Steele’s men, and one wasn’t wearing anything but his underwear.

  After clearing Main, Kyle drove another ten blocks, keeping his speed between five and ten miles an hour, slow enough that the infected could keep up the pace and fast enough that they couldn’t catch him. He had to swerve around new ones in the street twice, and he even clipped one with the passenger mirror, but none of them climbed onto the vehicle or forced him to stop.

  Then he made three right-hand turns and gunned it back to the Fremont County Jail at 60 miles an hour.

  40

  The stench of death in the cellblock was stronger than Parker expected, like rotten meat, diarrhea and urine tinged with asparagus in a pungent wine glass. He had gotten used to the slurps and moans from the infected as they nourished themselves on gore and splashed their way through blood on the floor, and he felt relieved that he couldn’t see them anymore now that night had fallen again, but the reek was so overpowering that he could taste it.

  He lay on the bottom bunk of his cell with Tawnie’s small body spooned against his. They’d been laying together like that for an hour. It was her idea. He wasn’t going to start pawing her in the dark, especially not under the circumstances, and while there was certainly nothing romantic about it, and despite the horror engulfing them, he felt aroused. He couldn’t quite believe it and adjusted himself so she wouldn’t notice. Her body felt so good nestled against his that he could almost forget on occasion that even if they survived for a while, their last days would be the grimmest of both of their lives.

  “I wish I was dying at home,” Tawnie said.

  “Where’s home?” Parker said.

  “Iowa.”

  Parker had never been there. He was suppos
ed to go, though, with Hughes, Annie and Kyle.

  “Where in Iowa?” Parker said. He wouldn’t recognize the name of her hometown unless she grew up in Des Moines.

  “Council Bluffs. It’s across the Missouri River from Omaha.”

  Exactly where Parker was supposed to be headed.

  “It has a gorgeous downtown,” she said. “Much nicer than Omaha’s.”

  He thought about kissing her neck and placing his hand to her hip, but he didn’t want her freaking out and pulling away.

  “If we make it out of here,” she said, “will you take me?”

  “To Omaha?”

  “Council Bluffs. On the Iowa side.”

  Parker nodded. She couldn’t see him nod in the darkness, but surely she felt it. “I’ll take you.”

  She snuggled in closer as if she wanted him, but he knew she didn’t. The smell! And the horror. And the grisly sounds on the other side of the bars. This was no place, and no time, for love.

  He closed his eyes and took a slow breath.

  Then Tawnie sat bolt upright on the mattress.

  Parker opened his eyes to a flashlight beam in his face. Someone was out in the lobby. Someone was coming.

  The guards had abandoned the prison as Kyle expected, even leaving the front door unlocked, but the building wasn’t empty. Just behind and to the right of the check-in desk he saw a door with a wire mesh window, another one like it a dozen or so feet beyond, and just past the second door, movement. People. Behind the two doors must be the jail.

  He stepped to the glass and aimed his shotgun/flashlight combo into the blackness.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. A man’s voice, muffled and far away. The glass was probably bulletproof. “Back here!”

  Kyle saw a large figure waving both arms over his head in the universal distress signal. He tried the first door and found it was locked.

  Then the face of a male infected appeared at the window in the second door and snarled.

  Kyle flinched and stepped back. If there were infected in the prison block, they could be anywhere in the building. The guards might not have abandoned the place after all. They might have turned.

  He turned around and swept the Maglite across the detention center’s reception area. Dust particles defied gravity in the powerful beam. He saw the front desk, some filing cabinets, an empty chair behind the desk and a door that probably led to an administrative area. The back of his neck tingled, almost as if someone or something might be behind him, but nothing moved and nothing stirred. His mouth tasted sour. He wished he had some toothpaste.

  The male infected he’d seen in the prison block screamed. Its cry sounded muted through the solid doors, but there was no mistaking it for anything else.

  “Help us! Get us out of here!” A woman’s voice this time, quieter than the man’s.

  Then a frenzy of muted screams from more infected, followed by furious banging and kicking against the doors and the walls.

  The survivors must have locked themselves inside cells. They couldn’t possibly survive back there otherwise. Kyle had no way of knowing how many infected waited behind the twin doors, but judging by the violent commotion, there were a lot of them.

  Parker was somewhere back there, but he might be dead. He couldn’t turn again, but his immunity wouldn’t save him if one of those things opened his throat with its teeth.

  If Kyle could locate the keys, he could open both doors, release the infected and lead them away as he did earlier with the others in Andy’s van. That other large pack was not coming back, not any time soon. He’d taken them far away to the south, then gunned the engine hard to the west before returning north and swinging back to the prison. They had no idea where he went. He could do the same thing again, only this time he’d lead the infected into the desert.

  In the top drawer of the check-in desk he found a steel ring with dozens of mismatched keys attached. He used the Maglite to search the reception area again and saw no one. If anyone or anything were nearby, they would have heard him by now.

  Inside the prison block, a surging mob of enraged infected tried to push through the second door with brute force.

  Kyle swallowed hard and tried opening the first of the two doors with a key selected at random. It didn’t even fit in the lock. Neither did the second or third key. The fourth key slid in as if it had been greased. He just stood there a moment with his hand on the knob, not quite daring to turn it. If he could open the first door, he could open the second, and when he opened the second, death would be inches and possibly seconds away. He wished he had a flamethrower.

  Kyle took a deep breath, turned the knob and pushed on the door. It must have weighed a half ton, and as soon as it opened, the rage on the other side of the second door doubled in volume. He wiped sweat off his forehead and took a step back.

  The door swung closed. It wouldn’t stay open.

  Shit. That was a serious problem. The second door was a dozen feet away. If Kyle opened it after letting the first door swing closed, he’d be trapped between a surging mass of muscle and teeth on one side and a locked door as heavy as a bank vault’s on the other. He’d stand no chance of escaping before getting pounced on.

  Kyle returned to the reception area and used the Maglite to look around. He could haul the filing cabinet out of the corner and use it to prop open the first door, but it was bulky enough that it could block his own exit. A rubber doorstop might work if he could find one somewhere in the building, but Andy might have something better in the van. Kyle scanned his memory and recalled seeing a spare tire in back. That would probably work.

  So he went outside to fetch it and felt air as cool as a glass of water on his face. Nothing was in the parking lot except Andy’s van and a wadded-up napkin on the ground.

  Kyle opened the back of the van, retrieved the spare tire and set it down upright on the pavement so he could roll it into the building, then slammed the door shut. A rookie mistake, and he regretted it instantly. But he didn’t hear anyone or anything stirring, and when he scanned the parking lot and the street with the Maglite he didn’t see anyone or anything coming at him.

  He rolled the tire inside and used it to prop open the first of the two doors. That door was so heavy that it shoved the tire up against the jamb and the wall, but it held and it did so perfectly. With the door half shut, the passage narrowed so that only one person, and therefore just one infected, could escape at a time. Since they’d surely stampede on their way out, they’d also jam themselves up.

  Kyle made a fist and bounced his knuckles against his mouth. Three infected—two male and one female—snarled at him through the wire mesh glass. They knew they couldn’t get through and had given up trying to force themselves through. Which was perfect. They were as relaxed as they were going to get and had no idea Kyle was about to open the door. They seemed to sense it, though, and jostled with anticipatory energy when he placed the key in the lock.

  Kyle’s fingers trembled on the key ring. He felt dizzy, couldn’t swallow and blood roared in his ears. He could turn around and walk, just get in the van and drive right now to Nebraska, but he didn’t come this far only to go no farther, so he took a deep breath, held it, turned the key in the lock and pulled on the knob.

  Nothing happened.

  The door opened into the prison block, not the hallway. He had to shove it into the infected that were pressing themselves up against it.

  He stepped back and raised the shotgun/flashlight combo over his head and aimed the beam of light as far back into the prison block as he could. There were at least a hundred back there, all of them swarming the door. They weren’t trying to keep him out, though. They wanted him to open that door.

  “Fuck it,” he said, lowered the shotgun and flashlight, turned the key in the lock again and pushed as hard as he could.

  Kyle could only force the door open an inch. He had to plant his foot hard against the door to keep the infected from slamming it again, and he gagged on a sudden wet st
ench of corpses rotting in an open sewer.

  A male infected locked eyes with Kyle’s through the mesh glass. It was in its forties. Blood covered its face and gore clotted its hair. Its eyes were cold, almost reptilian, but even so, Kyle sensed a buried intelligence in them. Something shifted on its face. It knew Kyle was trying to open the door.

  Kyle kept his foot planted so the door wouldn’t close again and grasped the shotgun. The 40-something infected stepped back and reached for the knob. Kyle wanted to squeeze the trigger the moment the door opened, but it would slam shut again if he fired.

  The 40-something infected flung open the door. Death was three feet away.

  Kyle ran hard, past the first door, through the lobby and out into the night.

  The screams of the pursuing infected sounded like the end of the world.

  The plan should have worked. All Kyle had to do was get in the van, drive off and let those things chase him into the desert, but when he bolted out the front door with a horde surging behind him, a dozen more lurked in the parking lot, the bulk of them bang between him and his vehicle.

  He could squeeze the trigger—the Remington and the Maglite were already pointed right at them—but he didn’t expect company, didn’t expect to fire, didn’t run with the weapon braced against his shoulder so that he could fire, and he couldn’t take all of them out in two seconds anyway, so he veered to the right toward the street and away from the van.

  The pack in the lot weren’t initially sure what they were looking at. They couldn’t see anything but the Maglite in their eyes. But when Kyle ran past at a 45-degree angle, they caught a glimpse of his profile, knew that they had found prey and joined the stampede charging out of the prison.

  Kyle could not stop. Could not turn around. Could do nothing but run as fast and as long as his body would let him. He shot across the street into a mobile home community and then, two blocks later, into a neighborhood of ramshackle houses while the shrieking horde followed.