The Haven Series (Book 2): Haven

by Brian M. Switzer

  “God, It’s just great that things are relaxed enough that I can push your buttons for the fun of it!” She walked toward the entrance, slapping his butt as she passed him by. “Be safe and get back to me,” she called back over her shoulder. ”Love you!”

  “Love you too,” he mumbled. He trudged to the truck and got in on the passenger side.

  Danny looked over from the driver’s seat. In his best child’s voice, he asked, “Am I going to get a new Daddy?”

  In the rear seat Jiri pretended to be writing on a piece of paper. “Note to self; never compare women to livestock.”

  Will turned in his seat until both of them were in his line of sight. “You know, assholes, someday the three of us will drive off on one of these little adventures and I’ll be the only one to return. I’ll tell everyone creepers got you. But I’ll be lying.

  “Now- let’s go get the tenderfoots.”

  Justin

  * * *

  There were seven of them piled into two trucks- Will and his two cohorts in the Ford and four of The Judge’s people in a Dodge truck that belonged to the cheese factory in its prior life. The Judge brought along Mark, a hefty, amiable ex-fireman named Clark Tullin and Jax Garfield.

  Will disliked Garfield on sight. He was a retired police officer from there in Carthage; The Judge suffered under the misconception that he would be the quarry’s Head of Security when the need for one arose. Garfield was the stereotypical cop bully. He spoke in a loud, forceful voice at all times. He liked to get right up against people and intimidate them with his voice and forty-pounds-overweight body, even in normal day-to-day conversation. Peering at the world through an ever-present pair of Raybans, he topped off the whole look with a bushy cop-mustache. Jax and Danny were already eye-fucking each other whenever they were in the same vicinity. Will had decided not to interfere when the two of them inevitably went chest to chest. Danny could level a tub like Jax without working up a sweat.

  They fired up the trucks and drove across the basin. They were nearing the start of the long, steep uphill drive to the top when Jiri yelled. “Stop!” He pointed toward the tunnels.

  Justin ran toward them, waving his arms and yelling unintelligibly. When he got close, Will pushed the button to roll down his window. Justin ran to the opening, red-faced and gulping for air.

  “What is it, son?” Will asked, concerned. His first thought was Becky sent Justin to stop them for some unknown reason.

  Justin was so winded he had trouble forming a sentence. “I wanted… wanted to catch you… and…,” he panted.

  “Slow down,” Will counseled. “Catch your breath. Easy does it.”

  Justin walked around in circles with his head down and his hands on his hips. His breathing slowed and his cheeks regained their color. He approached the truck window a second time, looking at Will through big, pleading eyes. “I didn’t want you to head out without your navigator.”

  Will scratched his head and Jiri chuckled in the back seat. Danny grasped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.

  Justin took charge of mapping out the routes they traveled during their twenty-four-day trip to The Underground. He attacked the job with the seriousness of an over-achieving teen studying for her SATs. His zealous navigating and fiercely anal-retentive nature enraged Danny. The pair had bickered like an old, discontented, married couple from Central Missouri to its Southwest corner.

  “We’re just going three miles away, buddy,” Will told him.

  Justin looked at the ground, but not before his face melted like chocolate in a microwave.

  Will tried to soften the blow. “You know I’d never take a trip of any distance without your help.”

  “Three miles isn’t what it used to be,” Justin said, with a note of desperation in his voice. “There’s no safe trip anymore.” He nodded toward Danny and Jiri. “Heck, they got attacked walking to the top of the hill. What if you get cut off and you have to backtrack?”

  Will caved. “You have a point, Justin. You’d better get in the truck.”

  Justin hooted in triumph, and in the next moment looked devastated. “Aughh! I don’t have my maps. "

  “Well, run and get them. We’ll wait. And Justin?”

  Will’s navigator was already running toward their tunnel. He turned back toward the truck with an expectant expression.

  “Take your time, son. Don’t wear yourself out. We’re not in a hurry.”

  Justin nodded furiously and took off again.

  Danny still squeezed the steering wheel. “I’m going to kill that guy.”

  Will opened the truck’s door. “You leave Justin alone,” he said in a stern voice as he exited the truck. “I’ll let our new friends know what’s going on.”

  The Lesson

  * * *

  The trucks started up the long incline again, this time with Justin and his maps on board. Once they passed the quarry gate, they turned right onto Civil War Road, traveling north instead of taking the road south into town. The pine and fir trees that grew on top of the bluff flew by out the passenger-side windows. In place of modern guardrails, over-sized limestone blocks four feet tall by six feet long were positioned side-by-side along the edge of the road. An electric power transfer station loomed on the other side, a relic that stood to remind them of conveniences no longer available.

  The trucks turned to the east onto Juniper Road and Will looked out his window at the north end of the quarry. On their left, squalid empty lots brimming with chat piles and mounds of dirt, and dotted with scruffy pines and gaunt scrub oaks, extended out to the horizon.

  They’d driven two miles when Justin called for Danny to turn south on V Highway. On the west side of the road, a smattering of rundown houses and glorified shacks emerged just past a sign that labeled them Kendricktown. A few creepers wandered the streets of the tiny town. They shared the same reaction when they heard the trucks. They stood motionless, turning their heads to follow the engine noise. Once the trucks passed by the dead pursued them, shuffling along behind them.

  Opposite the houses, on the east side of the highway, metal buildings belonging to a medium-sized trucking company sprouted from a gravel parking lot. Rows of refrigerated trailers emblazoned with the words Mormont Trucking in bright red letters sat silent sentinel behind a chain link fence. Further back, a collection of semi-tractors bearing the same name waited for drivers that would never arrive.

  The trailers gave Will an idea. “If we put a couple of those reefer units in a tunnel, we might be able to connect a jenny to them. Store meat inside, and medicine. Use them like giant refrigerators.”

  “We’d be able to have an ice-cold beer or six,” Danny said with a dreamy look.

  “It will be tough to keep generators running,” Jiri said. “We’d have to find fuel, figure out a way to get it out of the ground or the tank it’s in, and transport it. And unless there’s a refinery somewhere back in those tunnels, none of that matters because the gas will go bad soon.”

  Danny glared at him in the rearview mirror. “You’d shit on a little girl’s birthday cake and smile, wouldn’t you, smart guy?”

  Will drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “Maybe Cyrus the Genius can distill the unharvested corn sitting in these fields into fuel.”

  V Highway curved east for a mile, then made a long, gentle curve South, where it intersected with 96 Highway- the highway Will’s group followed for the last sixty miles of their journey to Carthage. Danny stopped at the intersection and Will motioned for the Dodge to pull up beside them.

  A small convenience store sat on their left. Looters had busted out the windows and doors and someone pried the covers off the store’s underground gas tanks. On the right was a drive-up motel choked with weeds and half-covered with bittersweet vines. It looked like it had been in bad shape before the outbreak. Across the highway and on the opposite corner a second motel loomed from the top of a hill. It was larger and nicer than the first one and the cars and trucks gathering
dirt in its parking lot were newer.

  Catty-corner from the idling trucks, sunlight sparkled on the surface of a man-made lake. Will estimated Kellog Lake covered about twenty-five acres. Shaped like a triangle with the corners rounded off, the lake sported wooden piers that jutted out in discordant intervals and a concrete boat ramp that sprung from the lake’s far side. The remnants of a gravel road ran circled the lake under the shadow of its high banks and a small island sat in its center.

  Spring River is a sludgy brown ribbon that twists and turns along two sides of the lake. The river runs like a stretched-out U along the east half of the lake’s southern shore, then curves gracefully away. It turns to the north a few hundred yards beyond the lake’s southwest corner, rushes over a man-made waterfall, then runs under a bridge and continues north until out of view. A lush meadow that filled the space between the river and the lake narrowed as the bodies of water neared one another, ending as a small oval of grass at the edge of a large copse of trees.

  That meadow had been the staging area for a massive military offensive against the creepers. As he looked down at the killing ground, Will could see how it made sense, in theory. The bodies of water were perfect for protecting the troop’s flanks and the woods covered their rear. In reality, it created an inverted funnel with no place for retreat when the dead overwhelmed the living.

  The Dodge’s doors swung open. The Judge and his crew exited the truck and stared at the meadow. Will saw their wide eyes and slack jaws and felt a hint of sympathy for them. He recalled his shock when his group first passed by the battlefield a few days ago and saw the carnage. He got out of the Ford and stood next to the older man, watching as he surveyed the slaughter.

  Two tanks, a fleet of armored personnel carriers, and an assortment of cargo and troop transports cluttered the scene. Some were overturned and others had burned. Countless explosion craters, many big enough to shelter a full-sized sedan, created a crazy moonscape of holes, rises, and ridges. Blood splattered, ran in streams, and collected in pools, then dried, staining the meadow and everything in it carmine. Will had a long and sleepless night thinking about that blood after he witnessed the death and dismemberment his first time past. The outbreak started in early March, and by mid-April civilization had toppled. It must have rained at least a dozen times since then, and blood still stained the vehicles and the grass and the dirt, so much blood that three seasons of rainstorms couldn’t wash it away.

  But the worst were the bodies, the remains of a thousand soldiers strewn about and left to rot under the summer sun. Rib cages rose from the grass and pearl-white bones littered the meadow like driftwood along a river after a summer flood. Skulls rested on the chilly ground; if you looked at them through binoculars, you’d see the deep gouges left by the snapping jaws of the dead. The remains rested next to creepers in military camouflage, their wounds so grievous they were unable to rise. Reanimated soldiers without legs laid with their face in the dirt or looking up at the gray November sky; a lucky few pulled themselves through the grass with their arms. Others, with most of their torsos eaten away, struggled to rise but lacked the bones and muscle structure to do so. He carnage brought in carrion from miles away. Dogs, crows, and rats gorged on the dead and the reanimated alike. Feral pigs wandered the field, feasting wantonly and crushing the soldier’s bones with molars stronger than steel. Coyotes skulked along the edge of the field, keeping keen eyes on those injured to badly to protect themselves.

  A few uniformed creepers shambled among the grisly apparitions. For whatever reason, they’d stayed behind when the herd that overran the soldiers moved on in pursuit of some other stimuli, their numbers bolstered by hundreds of dead soldiers. The stench of death filled the air. It was the odor of blood, guts, and gore, of decay and decomposition.

  Will gazed at The Originals. Jax’s face was impassive but Tullin and Renner moved in slow motion, as if they’d been numbed. Clark held his head in his hands and Mark stared at the field with big, blank eyes and shook his head back and forth. Will didn’t think he was aware of it. The Judge’s bottom lip trembled and large tears tracked down his cheeks, though he made no sound. Will put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. The Judge focused his tear-filled eyes on the bigger man.

  “Why did you bring us here?” he asked in a plaintive tone.

  Will’s tone was urgent and sincere. “This is the military you’ve been hoping for, Jody. I traveled seven hundred miles to get here. It was this,” he pointed at the massacre in front of them, “the entire way. Nobody in authority is left. There is no civilization. No one is coming to save the day. The military is gone. The only thing that remains is staying as safe as you can and surviving each day.”

  The Judge pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and honked into it. “You can do that? Keep us safe and help us survive?”

  “I — we — can.” Moans and snarls erupted from the other side of the truck, cutting Will off. The sounds galvanized the Originals. The Judge made a high pitched squeal and jumped straight in the air, and Jax unleashed a horrible string of curses. All four of them scrambled for the safety of their truck; The Judge clambered inside and shut the door. The other three stood near it, prepared to do the same.

  Will stared, thunderstruck. Danny snorted and sneered at them; Jiri covered his mouth with a hand and looked up at the sky as if transfixed by something up there. Will used a quiet tone so only his men could hear him. “Danny, take Jiri and handle the creepers before our new friends pee themselves. Bring them out in the open so these guys can see you put them down.”

  “Got it, boss.” Danny reached into the rear of their truck and pulled out a machete and a two-sided fireman’s ax. He tossed the ax to Jiri and together they walked out to meet the dead.

  Four of them shuffled toward the men with a greedy hunger. One was a tall fellow in a bloody Chef’s coat; the others were too decayed to identify as anything other than creature’s God never intended. The men split away from one another. The two creepers closest to Jiri followed him and the other two trudged after Danny.

  Jiri’s pair came at him one in front of the other. As the first one reached for him, snarling and drooling, he swung the ax low and cut its legs off at the knees. Twin spouts of blood gushed from its thighs and it tumbled to the side. The follow-through on his swing brought the ax to his shoulder level. He reversed the ax’s course, swinging it in a downward arc that cleaved the second creeper’s head as it stepped forward. It went slack and fell. The first creeper had pushed itself up with its arms like a man doing a plank. Blood and a thick black goo pooled at its knees. Jiri stepped toward it and delivered a tennis player’s underhand swing. The ax split its head in two at the ear, like a mush melon cut down the middle. The creeper fell.

  Danny’s creepers attacked simultaneously, arms outstretched and snarling. He stepped to the side and pushed the nearest one out of the way, sending it sprawling across the intersection. The other creeper came at him with its mouth open wide. Danny jabbed the machete deep into its maw; blood and bile spilled down the creepers front, but still, it fought its way toward him. Danny let it come. When they were almost nose-to-nose he pulled down on the machete’s handle and struck its pommel with an open palm, driving the point up and through the creeper’s brain. He jerked the blade free and the monster fell. The one he’d knocked down was halfway back to its feet. Danny spun, took a step, and swung the machete with two hands like a baseball player. The blade slashed through the creeper’s neck; its head fell to the asphalt and a geyser of blood shot from its body. The head bounced, rolled, and came to a stop on one ear. Its teeth rattled as its jaws snapped shut over and over, and its eyes rolled in their sockets. Danny placed the tip of the machete in the creeper’s exposed ear and pushed. The blade made a wet, squishing noise and the creature’s teeth and eyes grew still.

  When it was over The Judge sat motionless, looking down at his lap. Clark and Renner wore broad grins and Clark bounced up and down on his toes. Jax showed no emotion, gaz
ing at them with a blank expression through half-lidded eyes.

  “Dang, you guys made that look easy,” Clark said.

  Jiri pulled a rag from the truck bed and wiped the gore off his ax. “It’s like anything else. If you want to master a skill, you learn a few techniques and then practice them over and over. Anybody can do it.”

  He pointed to the gun on Jiri’s hip. “How come you didn’t just shoot them?”

  “Man, have you been around those things at all?” Danny interrupted.

  Clark looked at the ground, shoulders slumped. “No, not really. I worked at The Underground. Before, I mean. In a warehouse. I was on shift when things got crazy. I didn’t have any family at home to get to, so I stayed in the warehouse. Been down there ever since. That’s why I volunteered to come along on this- I wanted to see what it was like up top.”

  Jiri gave him a warm smile. “I believe that’s the wisest reaction to the outbreak I’ve ever heard.” Clark’s shoulders squared and he smiled. “Anyway, noise draws the dead more than anything else. If we’d shot those,” he pointed at the four downed creepers, “then those,” he pointed at the dead shuffling around the meadow, “would all head this way.”

  Will gave a brisk hand clap. “Every minute we’re up here increases the odds creepers will notice us. Let’s head back.” He caught The Judge’s eye. “Jody, do you want to come up to our tunnel, around dusk? Talk about things?”

  “Certainly. Would it be all right if I brought Mark and Cyrus?”

  “Bring whoever you’d like. It’s your place.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you at around five.”

  Will nodded, and he and his team settled into the Ford.

  “Ho-ly shit!” Danny said as soon as they’d shut the doors.

  “They’ve been in a safe, protected place,” Jiri said. “They haven’t had to learn the things we’ve learned.”