“Grady was quite the history buff, and I found this today … ‘Since I have entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.’ That was President Wilson in 1913. So Princess is right when she says it’s starting the same way it ended, whatever this thing was that President Wilson spoke of, it’s still out there. And people like that man from Texas are mighty useful idiots.”
“I won’t say it’s aliens, but it’s aliens.” Moonshine chuckled nervously and punched Rotten in the arm.
“It ain’t human, that’s all I know.” Princess opened a beer and took a long sip.
“I’m no Bible thumper,” Highland said, “but I’ve read it and one thing that I have never forgotten is a passage from Ephesians which says, ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ And when Rotten talks about unseen rulers I always think of that. ”
Princess and I looked at each other and shrugged, Highland read the Bible - who knew? “So now we not only have to worry about zombies, we also have religious nut jobs who may or may not go on crusades to rid the world of the survivors that they deem inferior, and unseen aliens controlling everything. Perfect, if it’s not one thing it’s another,” I said.
“How many cabins are on this dirt road, Will?” Highland pulled the laptop across the table and opened it to display the screen wallpaper that was a map of the area.
“On this road I think there are six, it’s a dead end a couple miles up and Bob Arnett’s is the last one on the road.”
“Okay I think before we go into Arlington we should go to each cabin, check for survivors and zombies, and get whatever supplies are there. Then once we see what we need and we’ll check out the town.”
Day Six
Tuesday
December 16, 2014
Early in the morning, Will, Sully, Rotten, and Princess loaded into the truck and Jeep and pulled down the driveway. Rotten said the first cabin was on the other side of the rise that Grady’s cabin was built into, and was also built into the hill. They talked about how cool it would be if we could dig a tunnel through the hill to connect them. Sully quickly told them that they would need a boring machine to get through the rock and they dropped the idea with a laugh.
The neighboring cabin was also an A-frame of log and glass and they got in easily through the front door without shattering it. In that cabin Princess found some better fitting clothes, raided the bathroom cabinet for tampons and toilet tissue, and took the scale. She didn’t find any art supplies, and Rotten didn’t find a guitar, but he did find two full cans of gas. Sully found maps, books, and several bottles of liquor and wine. And Will added a couple more rifles to our growing selection, he told me the makes and models, which I can’t remember, but he was excited with his treasure. In the kitchen they only found a few canned goods, pasta, coffee, and some crackers.
The next cabin up wasn’t the glass and logs type, but sat low under thick trees and just looked like a place where zombies would be, according to Rotten. Princess swore it was haunted upon first seeing it and even Sully said it gave him a chill when it came into view. The dark wooden building sat on an exposed rock foundation, only had two windows, and the boards that made up the façade were thick, nothing like you could find today, which led Sully to believe it was built in the early 1900s. Two stairs led to the door that was bolted with a padlock. Will said they stared at it for a long time before Sully called out. Then Rotten knocked on the door and peeked into the windows.
Will laughed when he explained how long it was before anyone got the nerve to cut the lock, but finally they did, with guns ready, and there was no one inside. They did find some oil lanterns, a stovetop percolator, and some more pots and pans to use on our noisemaking line of security. They said the inside of the cabin hadn’t changed much since the 1930s and had a wood stove big enough for cooking and baking and they debated bringing it back to our cabin. The thing must have weighed five hundred pounds the way they talked about it and they decided if we needed it we could get it later.
The next cabin was exactly a mile away and was nicer than the last and smaller than the big A-frames. In it Will found a complete wardrobe that fit him, including a good pair of boots, and an unopened box with a model of the Star Trek Enterprise. Princess found a mostly unused sketchpad and colored pencils, she also grabbed the crayons and coloring books. They discovered that the room they were raiding belonged to a boy named Allen, and said that it was difficult to conceive that he was probably dead. “He was an artist,” Princess said later, showing me his work in the sketchpad. They also found a little more food, rice and other dry goods, and moved on to the next cabin.
The next place had a mailbox with delicately painted flowers and the name Simpson written on it, and a mobile home was set in a landscaped yard. A pink Cadillac with a handicap sticker was parked in the driveway and a wheelchair ramp led to the front door. Rotten called out, “Hello! Is anyone there?”
They heard a thump from inside and walked slowly up the ramp. Rotten called out again. “We’re not here to hurt you, we’re just checking to make sure everyone’s okay.” They heard another thump and a groan.
The front door had a panel of glass and Rotten peered into the house. I don’t know what Mrs. Simpson looked like before the zombie apocalypse, but now she looked pretty rough. She wore a pink pantsuit that was so stained with body fluids that Princess said only the hem on one pant leg still showed the original color. She was thin, very thin, as in starving-to-death thin, and the tight skin over her cheekbones had begun to rot away leaving open black sores with exposed cartilage. A wheelchair lay on its side in the small foyer and Mrs. Simpson was trapped under a bookcase. It appeared to them that it had fallen on her as she tried to pull herself up, but the rest of the house was in shambles so there was no way of knowing. She writhed under the weight of the sturdy wooden shelves and was trapped against the front door.
“We have to kill it,” Rotten said.
“Yeah, it’s only right to relieve her suffering.” Princess agreed.
“I’ll do it,” Will said, holding up the pistol in his hands.
“No, you won’t,” Sully said.
“I’ve killed deer before.”
“Well, this isn’t an animal, it’s human and you’re not killing it, you’re just a kid. I’ll do it.” Sully volunteered, but Princess said she could tell he sure didn’t want to.
They walked around to the back door, jimmied the lock with a crow bar, and stepped inside slowly with their weapons raised. The floor plan of the trailer was open so they could clearly see the woman thrashing through the doorway of the small foyer and the room was thick with the putrid smell of decomposition.
“You have to shoot it in the head,” Rotten said, and the woman growled, snapped, and drooled some thick black liquid that he assumed was once blood.
Sully raised the pistol and looked down the barrel.
“You have to take the safety off.” Will reached over and clicked off the locking mechanism. “I don’t know why you just won’t let me do it.”
“Shhh…” Sully said and fired. He hit her in the center of the forehead, her skull cracked in two like a dried up apple, and she collapsed. Sully’s hands were shaking when he slid the gun back in his holster and Princess saw sweat on his forehead despite the chill in the air.
“Damn, that was a good shot,” Will said. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Don’t curse, Will,” was all he said.
They didn’t search the place after putting the old woman down because they were sure that anything from her house would have a
bsorbed the scent of her rotting flesh. They opened a couple windows to air out the place and discussed burying the body, but no one wanted to get anywhere near her for fear of contracting the virus from the body fluids. They left her where she lay and moved on to the next cabin.
At the next stop Rotten hit pay dirt when he found an older, well-kept guitar in a soft case. He went on and on when they returned about how it was a Martin, but that didn’t mean anything to us and he just shook his head and sighed at our ignorance as he strummed it. They also found a pair of rocking chairs on the front porch of that cottage that Princess said she must have, so they loaded them on the back of the truck. Sully found more liquor and another full gas can, and Will found some cards, checkers and a Monopoly game. They didn’t find much food, but took the little that was there, mainly cans of beef stew and sardines.
At the final stop along the road, which was Bob Arnett’s place, Will found pictures of he and his dad, and one of his dad’s favorite fishing hats. Princess said she could tell Will was crying, but he sucked it up and pretended he had dirt in his eye. They also found some more gas, a little more food, and several rolls of duct tape. Princess found a couple quilts that she said she could sell for several hundred dollars each at her gallery, at least she could have if her gallery still existed. When they pulled into the driveway it looked like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath or The Beverly Hillbillies with those rocking chairs stuck on the back of the truck, but all and all they did well in adding to our supplies.
That evening at dinner Sully didn’t say much and drank a bottle of wine while Princess, Rotten, and Will talked about their day. When the story came to the zombied Mrs. Simpson all eyes turned to Sully and we grew quiet.
“Sully, are you okay?” Mrs. Williams said softly.
“Yeah, how’d you learn to shoot like that? I thought you were a teacher,” Will said.
Sully looked away from the windows to us. “Yes, I’m okay. It’s not how I ever envisioned my life, never planned for this type of retirement.” He laughed harshly. “Will, my father was a world war two vet and he raised us to know how to handle a weapon. I suppose he was a good father in that he provided for us financially, but he wasn’t a pleasant man. He wasn’t a nice man at all, but to the outside world we had it all. Sundays were the day he taught us to be tough, even my little sister who was the girliest girl I have ever known, and guns were a part of that.” He shook his head slowly. “Every Sunday morning when others were in church we had shooting practice from the time I was a very young boy until I left for college. I literally have not touched a gun in thirty years, but I guess there are some things you don’t forget.”
“Except the safety, you forgot the safety.” Will laughed.
“Well, there is that.” Sully smiled. “I was thinking about Mrs. Simpson, decomposition had set in pretty well with her, and I am guessing she turned when it all started six days ago since she was alone and locked in her house.”
“Then why didn’t she burn when the sun came up, her place had lots of windows,” Princess asked.
“I don’t know, but a zombie has no respiration, it’s cells die pretty quickly and it begins to decay like any other dead thing, so maybe all we have to do is wait them out for a couple months until they are nothing but bone.”
“The problem with that is most aren’t locked up and are spreading the disease, it’s probably a biological imperative to spread it once they are infected, like any parasite,” Highland said. “So even if the first to be infected start to just decay away and drop dead, there are still all those that they bit, if biting is the only way it spreads. I’m pretty sure it’s not airborne, but I don’t know if contact with the body fluids could spread it. There’s so much we don’t know despite all the zombie movies we’ve watched. Either way, we need to get into Arlington and prepare to be on our own for a long time.”
We were quiet for a while and then the subject changed to getting to Arlington. The route that led into the small town was a state road that had been in use since well before the Interstate system came through. It was still well traveled by those wanting to escape the boredom of the highway and enjoy the sights of rural South Carolina. It dead ended at a junction in one direction, and led through Arlington, over the bridge, and into Freemont at the other.
“So before the news crapped out they said there were roadblocks here.” Highland pointed to one of the maps Sully had found that day. “I don’t know if they had literal roadblocks or just police stopping traffic, but I’d like to check that end of road before we go into town.”
“And depending on what we find in Arlington, we may block that road ourselves to keep the crazies out,” Moonshine said.
“You know the news looping the earthquake and flood again and again might be to our benefit. If there are people out there stealing and raping, they’d probably think there was nothing in this area, and if there are self-professed rulers looking for a tribe, they will also think no one is here,” I said, pretty much repeating what Highland, Moonshine and I had discussed earlier in the day.
Day Seven
Wednesday
December 17, 2014
We left right after breakfast, dressed in layers, with duct tape around as many fleshy parts of our bodies as we could cover and pulled out in two cars - Moonshine and Princess in the truck, and Highland, Rotten, and I in the Jeep. We parked on the dirt road, just out of sight of the blacktop and got out to listen. We waited for fifteen minutes and besides a few squirrels complaining about our presence we heard nothing. We had no idea what to expect, so we didn’t have any other plan except to stay close and keep our radios and guns ready.
We turned onto the pavement, Highland behind the wheel and in the lead, and drove slowly. The two-lane highway had wide shoulders of grass on each side, which led to stands of pine, and was deserted, but coming around a curve we saw a house. It was a low white bungalow and had pansies blooming in containers on each side of the front porch. It was set far off the street and was heavily landscaped with evergreen bushes and trees, giving it a bit of privacy and separation from passersby. We decided to check it out on our way back from the roadblock and let the others know over the radio. We saw another house not far away on the opposite side of the road, added it to our list to investigate, and then passed nothing but woods, empty pastures, and a couple signs announcing the upcoming junction.
We came out of a curve into a straightaway and could see the junction in the distance. Highland stopped and Moonshine pulled along side him. Princess leaned out of the truck window with the binoculars and said, “Looks like a bunch of cars, but I don’t see anyone moving.”
We moved forward, the vehicles side by side, and the scene before us grew clearer. Bright orange wooden sawhorses blocked the road, and parked on either side in the grass were two black unmarked sedans. In the middle of the intersection several cars were parked haphazardly, and on two of them the driver’s side door was open. We didn’t see any movement, but did see a leg sticking out in front of one of the sedans.
“Let’s turn the cars around before we get out,” I said. “In case we need to haul ass.”
We parked within about twenty yards of the scene, our vehicles facing the way we’d just come, and climbed out slowly, acknowledging the scent of death in the air with a glance. I made sure the safety was off my pistol and although I felt uncomfortable with it in my hand, I was grateful to have it. We moved toward the scene in a group, the guys in front, and Princess and I behind.
“I sure as hell don’t know how that happened,” I said, studying the body dressed in a black unmarked uniform that lay in front of the sedan, at least the part that still remained. The top half of the body was missing, cut diagonally from shoulder to hip, leaving no head, a single arm, and one of the legs was sheared off at the knee.
“Probably from the wreck.” Moonshine nodded toward the intersection where a truck had rear-ended an SUV. “If he was standing at the back of the SUV when that truck hit I bet it could hav
e cut him up like that.”
Mystery solved, we glanced into the car, noticing the caged backseat, and only found some fast food wrappers and a half eaten sub.
“We should be looking under the cars, too,” Princess said, and we all jumped back a couple steps and moved to the center of the road.
“Duh,” I said, dropping to my knees to look under all the cars. “I don’t see anything.”
I stood up just as we heard a thud coming from the direction of the other sedan parked on the grass. Moonshine stepped closer, his height allowing him to see down into the seat, and shook his head. “There’s somebody in there, backseat.” He raised his gun, and stepped closer. “Yep, shackled zombie in the back seat.”
I checked the underneath of the car again and we all stepped closer, peering through the window. The man in the caged area of the car had both his hands and feet restrained behind his back by white plastic tie locks. He wore khakis and a sweater over a collared shirt, but now his clothes were soaked in fluids from both the decay of his zombification and the blood from the huge whole in his throat and chest. He thrashed, rolling back and forth on his stomach, his teeth snapping.
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