The Departed

by Chase McCown

  A gunshot rang out, echoing through the cavern. The great bear just stood there, shocked at first. Finally, it stumbled backward and fell to the cave floor with a thud. The four waited patiently to see if it would rise again, but it remained deathly still, blood pouring from a hole in its chest.

  The four huddled together and sat at the entrance to the cave, away from the bear, until a nearby lightning strike forced them to inch their way closer to it. They settled on a point halfway between the two and sat in a circle while they waited for the storm to pass.

  They spent their time talking, or rather attempting to talk to each other over the hail, driving winds, and thunder that echoed through the forest.

  Charlie, unwilling to commit himself to yelling over the others or the storm outside, stared out into the forest, watching as lightning struck with startling frequency and hail the size of nickels pelted the forest floor.

  Soon morning turned to evening, and evening to night, with still no sign of the storm letting up.

  “We’d better get some rest,” Howard suggested, glancing around the cave floor for somewhere comfortable to lay down. He placed his backpack against the cold cave wall and got ready for bed. The others followed suit, finding similar spots in the damp cave.

  Charlie decided to stay near the entrance and let the sounds of the storm outside lull him to sleep. In a few minutes, he was fast asleep.

  Sleeping in a cave where they had just killed a bear was not something Susan was excited about, but she was exhausted. Reluctantly, she drifted off to sleep as well.

  She found herself in the middle of a dense fog. She couldn’t see very far in any given direction, and the only thing apart from the fog that she was able to see were the stars in a surprisingly clear night sky.

  “Susan?” a voice called from within the fog.

  “Charlie? Charlie, is that you?” Susan called back.

  “Susan! I can’t see you. Where are you?” the voice asked.

  “Where are you, Charlie? I can’t see you,” Susan called back, moving toward where she thought she had heard the voice.

  “You have to help me, Susan! They’re after me!”

  “Who’s after you? Charlie, who’s after you?” Susan asked.

  “I can’t get away, Susan! You have to help me!” the voice called back.

  She took off in a frantic sprint, racing toward where she thought the voice had come from.

  “Charlie, I can’t see you! Where are you?” Susan called, growing despondent.

  “I’m over here, Susan! Hurry, they’re still coming!”

  “I’m coming, Charlie, just hang on! I’m almost there!” Susan shouted.

  She couldn’t seem to get her bearings in the thick fog. She saw a shape in front of her—a silhouette within the blinding fog. At first, she hoped it was Charlie, but the closer she came, the more she realized how unbelievably tall the thing was. Then she realized it was a tree. A great oak ascended in the middle of the strange fog. Its girth was greater than she could wrap her arms around, and its branches were far too tall to climb.

  She was jarred back to reality when Charlie called for her once more.

  She raced forward, away from the tree, as quickly as she could, but the fog was like a maze. She couldn’t find her bearings within it, and to her frustration, she soon found herself back at the same oak tree. Unless, of course, it was another oak tree. It had to be another, she thought.

  She decided to take her hatchet and carve a notch in the tree so that she would recognize it if she found it again.

  She set off once more, and this time, she went in a straight line, or as straight as she could, directly to where she heard Charlie’s voice. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, however, and once more, she found herself back at the great oak. This time, she was sure it was the same tree, as it had the notch carved in its side.

  No matter where she went, or what direction she left in, she could never seem to get any closer to Charlie. What’s more, she always seemed to end up at the same tree. It was as if the fog itself kept the two apart.

  Charlie’s calls became more and more frantic, and Susan was sure he didn’t have much time left. She kept running through the fog, always returning to the same tree, calling out to Charlie as loudly as she could.

  “I can’t find you, Charlie! I can’t find you in this fog! Are you okay? Just hold on! I’m coming, Charlie!”

  She woke up in the cave. The storm seemed to have passed, but the others hadn’t woken up yet. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her palms were sweating. She held out her hands, and they trembled uncontrollably. Her breaths came short and ragged, and she had to take a moment to compose herself.

  To her relief, Charlie was still fast asleep. It had all been a horrible dream. She was beginning to worry about Charlie, though. What did the dreams mean? Did they mean anything? They were growing harder and harder to ignore. She kept these thoughts to herself. What else could she do? What would she tell the others anyway? That she’d had a bad dream?

  Chapter 20

  May 8th, 2025. Phoenix, Arizona.

  It wasn’t long before the others awoke, and the four gathered their supplies and set out from the cave. They walked down the interstate for a couple of hours. It was mostly desolate, with a few cars either wrecked or out of gas along the way.

  “I’m going to check this one,” Susan said, pointing to a gray pickup truck. She found the driver’s side door open with the keys still in the ignition. She gave them a turn and saw that the truck still had half a tank of gas in it. She called to the others, and they were soon speeding down the interstate toward Phoenix. The road ahead was clear, and after many hours of driving, along with several shifts of drivers, they arrived at the city.

  Phoenix was a ghost town. The streets, aside from a few empty cars, were empty. No creeps were readily visible. Howard was beginning to wonder if the outbreak hadn’t spread this far yet.

  “Okay, guys. We need a car and as many supplies as we can get our hands on while we’re here. Let’s split up and see what we can find,” Howard said.

  “Split—” Charlie began, but soon realized the others had already walked off. “—up?” he finished.

  Susan walked across the street to a nearby gun shop to look for ammunition and weapons.

  She could tell the shop had already been ransacked. A chair had been thrown through the shop’s window, and glass littered the inside of the store.

  Most of the displays and racks were empty, but a few guns and some cases of ammunition remained. She took a shopping cart from a nearby store and loaded it with all the ammunition she could find that fit the weapons they had. She also took a gun for Charlie, a.45 caliber pistol.

  Once she had loaded everything she could find into the shopping cart, and just as she was about to leave, a deep thumping bass rocked the shop.

  *

  Howard and Jacob were looking through a nearby grocery store. They hoped they would be able to find some food and water to replace what they’d had to leave in the car.

  So far, the prospects of that appeared bleak. The store had already been plundered by survivors, and not much was left on the shelves. Some of the shelves had been overturned, and Jacob noticed a trail of bloody footprints that wound through the store.

  “Well, let’s take whatever we can find,” Howard said.

  He found a few loaves of moldy bread, but little else was visible in the store.

  Just as he was about to give up, he stumbled upon an abandoned shopping cart with a few boxes of canned food in it. He took the cart and went to find Jacob, who met him with the only case of bottled water left in the store.

  Just then, a deep thumping bass shook the otherwise silent store.

  *

  Charlie heaved a deep sigh. “Sure, split up,” he grumbled. “Great idea. It’s not like there’s bound to be anything dangerous in this city. It’s not like we just came out of a huge gunfight with some bandits a few days ago or anything.�
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  He began searching with his hands buried in his pockets, mumbling to himself the whole way.

  He soon came across a blue convertible, undamaged and with all four wheels intact.

  “Here’s something!” he shouted. “Wonder if it’s unlocked?”

  He tugged at the handle, and surprisingly enough, the door was indeed unlocked. The keys were even in the ignition.

  “This car’s got keys in the ignition!” Charlie yelled, reaching in to crank the ignition.

  On the first crank, the engine stalled. “Come on, come on.” Charlie cranked the engine a second time, and the engine stalled once again. “Please, please, please, please…” Charlie pleaded with the engine.

  On the third try, the engine purred to life.

  Unfortunately, so did the convertible’s competition level stereo system, and since the volume had been left at one hundred percent, the thumping bass it cranked out was unparalleled. It was so loud and unexpected that Charlie tumbled backward out of the car and landed on the dirt with a thud.

  “Charlie, shut that thing off! Do you want to draw every creep in the city this way?” Susan ordered, coming out of the gun shop.

  “I’m trying!” Charlie shouted back, utterly flustered by the entire series of events.

  He stood to his feet, fighting against the blaring stereo with his hands clamped against his ears like a vice.

  He finally reached the car door, only to see through the passenger side window a few infected barreling straight toward him about twenty or thirty yards away. Glancing left, then right, then turning and looking behind him, he saw them coming from all directions. Twenty, perhaps, that he could see. They were all at full sprint, and would soon be upon him.

  They ran in an awkward stumbling sort of way. It was as if, Charlie thought to himself, they ran with complete abandon. They seemed to pay no attention to what was in front of them, or what stood between them and what they were after, even if it was another infected. They would just as often run over their fellow infected rather than around them and would hardly ever glance down to check their footing.

  Some leaped from the tops of buildings rather than taking the time to descend stairs and while this killed a few, many simple stood to their feet and continued their frantic pace.

  While the infected ran, they never took their eyes off of Charlie. Not one stopped or slowed down to avoid a wrecked car or a stack of boxes. They simply collided with it or vaulted over it.

  Charlie was shocked by how quickly they did this. Even as clumsily as they ran, they still easily outpaced the average person.

  He finally managed to shut the radio off, but the damage had been done.

  “Get in the convertible!” Howard ordered.

  They threw what supplies they had gathered in the trunk as quickly as they could, and what they didn’t have time to load was left in the street and abandoned.

  They piled into the car just as the infected reached them. They lunged at the car, one even grabbed onto the windshield, but as Howard sped off, the creep lost its grip and tumbled away from the car.

  A few miles outside of Phoenix along a lonely stretch of highway, Charlie sat squirming in his seat.

  “Guys, I have to go to the bathroom. Can we stop here?”

  “Sure. It’s about time to switch shifts anyway.”

  Howard pulled the car over, and Charlie disappeared behind a nearby tree.

  When Charlie returned, Howard reminded Jacob it was his turn to drive, and Jacob moved into the driver’s seat and turned the key.

  Nothing happened.

  “What’s wrong?” Howard asked.

  “I don’t know. The car’s not wanting to start,” Jacob replied.

  “Let me take a look,” Susan asked, nudging Jacob over to the passenger seat and taking hold of the key.

  She gave the key several turns, but the car only whined defiantly.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Come on, you piece of—”

  “What’s wrong?” Charlie asked, hoping it was nothing serious.

  “I think the battery died,” she said.

  “Oh, don’t say that,” Charlie begged. “Anything but that. Are you sure? Maybe it’s out of gas or something?”

  “It’s not out of gas. It had a half tank left when we stopped,” Howard noted.

  “Ugh, why does everything have to happen to me?” Charlie groaned.

  “I guess we’ll have to walk on foot until we can find another car. We have to keep going, though,” Howard said.

  Charlie threw his hands up in frustration but said nothing.

  They gathered from the car what supplies they could carry and set off on foot once again.

  Chapter 21

  May 8th, 2025. Just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

  After about an hour of walking at nearly jogging pace, Charlie’s muscles were throbbing. He dragged his legs along reluctantly, struggling to keep up with the others. If he had to guess, he would say they were twenty or thirty feet ahead of him.

  “Let’s set up camp here,” Howard suggested.

  The others happily agreed, and soon Howard and Jacob were tending a small fire while Susan and Charlie searched for firewood.

  Susan finally felt better about her dream. Maybe it had been about Phoenix, she told herself, and the ambush there. But everyone had made it out of Phoenix safely, so maybe the dream didn’t mean anything at all. Or maybe it had been a warning for something that had already happened. She still didn’t know why she had become so worked up over it in the first place. It was only a dream, after all. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a kind of omen or something.

  Susan and Charlie found what few twigs and sticks they could and made their way back to the campsite. Soon they had a roaring fire to sit around and a light by which to see anything that may threaten them.

  “We should probably get some rest. We’re going to need it tomorrow,” Howard said.

  “Maybe it would be a good idea to set up a watch. You know, one person could stay up for a while, then wake up someone else and let them sleep, and so on?” Jacob suggested.

  “Good idea. I can take the first watch, and you take the second, Jacob. Susan, you can take the third watch. Charlie, you take the fourth.”

  The others agreed, and all but Howard settled in for the night.

  Susan was soon fast asleep.

  She woke up on a lifeboat. The light of the moon and the stars were all Susan was able to see by. She sat up, looked around, and saw the wrecked pieces of what she assumed had once been a large ship scattered throughout the water. Fins sliced through the waves around her, and she sat back as close to the middle of the lifeboat as she could to avoid rocking it.

  Then she heard a noise. She thought it might have been a voice. She paused to listen more closely, and she heard it again, more clearly this time.

  “Susan!”

  It was faint, but she knew the voice. It was Charlie’s.

  She found an oar laying in her boat, and she rowed as quickly as she could toward the sound. Not this time, she thought. This time, I’ll save him.

  She came closer and closer to where the voice was coming from, and she finally saw Charlie. He was lying on a large wooden raft that was half-submerged in the water. His face was pale, but he was smiling.

  “I’m here, Charlie! Just hang on, I’m going to row to you!” she said.

  He held his hand up and waved at her before the board gave way, and he slid into the dark abyss.

  “No! Charlie!” she shouted. “Charlie, come back! Can you hear me? Say something!”

  She was close now. Close enough to clearly see where he’d been. She rowed even closer, frantic now.

  She peered desperately into the inky depths, but not so much as a bubble emerged from the glassy water.

  “Susan. Susan? Susan!”

  She woke up with a start and saw Jacob sitting up beside her.

  “Sorry. It’s your shift. Are you okay? You were talking in y
our sleep.”

  “Hmm? Oh, I... Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Jacob hesitated but finally nodded.

  “I’m fine,” Susan said. “Go ahead and get some sleep.”

  Jacob nodded, made himself as comfortable as possible, and fell asleep.

  Now Susan was more worried than ever. She knew deep down that Charlie was in trouble. She didn’t know how, or why, but it was a feeling she couldn’t shake.

  She couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. She simply sat up watching Charlie. She was thankful that—for now, at least—he was still safe. When the time came, she shook him awake and told him it was time for his shift.

  When the sun finally began to peek over the horizon, Charlie woke the others so that they could set off on the next leg of the journey. When Charlie realized that Susan hadn’t been asleep, he became curious.

  “You didn’t sleep?” he asked.

  “A little. I had a bad dream, and I had trouble getting back to sleep after that.”

  “Ah. What was it about?”

  She wanted to tell him, but she felt awkward talking to him about it. It was just a dream after all. None of it was real, was it? No, it couldn’t be. She was probably just overreacting. So she pushed it as far out of her mind as she could once again and simply tried to ignore it.

  “It’s nothing. I mean...I don’t remember. Let’s get ready to move,” she said, standing and walking away to gather her things.

  Charlie thought it was strange for Susan to try to dodge the subject like that, but he didn’t think much of it. The dream seemed to have really shaken her.

  They put out the campfire and prepared to move on, but Susan couldn’t seem to put the dreams out of her mind. They have to mean something, she thought. She had to keep Charlie safe until she found out what.

  Chapter 22

  May 9th, 2025. Near Casa Grande, Arizona.

  The dry, searing heat of the Sonoran Desert pounded the four adventurers as they walked, making it almost impossible to breathe at times. Sand coated their tongues and blew over their faces, forcing them to squint to keep it out of their eyes. As they kept walking down the road, the wind began to pick up, and more dust was lifted into the air around them.