Apocalypse Journeys (Book 2): Finding AJ

by Melrose, Russ

  She searched the house for a bobbin of thread and found a small sewing kit in the Coleman's bedroom closet. Inside were a pair of scissors, two packs of needles, and several bobbins of thread. The scissors reminded her she needed to cut her hair before she left. She didn't want to have to deal with her hair out on the road.

  Jules cut off a three-inch length of black thread and tied it around the base of her little finger. She trimmed the excess. The thread would serve as a reminder for her to keep her promise, stay the course no matter what might happen. More than twenty years had passed since she last tied a thread around her finger. Her stepfather had used the practice as a teaching tool to emphasize the importance of keeping promises. Jules would keep the thread on her finger till she found the Calligrapher. She would keep her promise.

  Chapter 38

  Leaving Henderson

  She grabbed the three boxes she'd packed and the travel bag and carried them out to the garage.

  She rummaged through the bag trying to think of anything else she might need. She'd packed toiletries, pads and tampons, a few clothes, a flashlight, nose clips, even a pair of binoculars she'd found in the Colemans' bedroom closet. Though it made little sense, she brought her iPhone and charger with her too.

  Since she was headed to Gideon, Utah, Jules would have to get gas on the way. She found a half-filled plastic gas can in the garage along with a drill set and a couple of empty plastic tubs. She flicked the drill on for a split-second. The battery was still good.

  She checked the watch she'd found in Agent Coleman's chest of drawers. It was quarter past six. She had to get going before the desert sun got too hot. She'd head to Beckerman's first. She dreaded going there, but she needed his Jeep. Roadblocks had been set up that first weekend in an attempt to contain the virus, and she needed the jeep to go off-road and bypass the roadblocks.

  There was food and water to consider as well. Jules thought there might be leftovers from Beckerman's Fourth of July party, possibly water too.

  Before she left, she went upstairs to check out the street from the Colemans' bedroom window. Outside, a soft blue-gray morning twilight bathed the neighborhood. A half block down, she spotted two infected, a male and a female, standing in a garden peering through a picture window.

  She headed back down to the garage. It was time. Jules took a deep breath. Her muscles felt tight. She jiggled her arms and body to get loose. She was as ready as she'd ever be. She reached up and pulled the bypass switch. She grabbed the garage door handle and lifted it up. The door clattered noisily as it rolled up into place.

  Jules ran as fast as she could to the car. She glanced down the street as she ran. The two grays turned and watched her like curious children. Then they began to trundle excitedly across the lawn.

  Jules got in and started the car. The engine groaned twice before turning over. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. They'd made it out to the street and were three houses away.

  She pulled forward twenty feet into the middle of the street to give herself a better angle. She put the Impala in reverse and floored it. The tires spun and whined and Jules backed the car up and angled it into the driveway and up into the garage.

  She hastily threw everything into the back seat. Once she was back in the car, she shifted into drive and sped out of the garage.

  The two infected had yet to reach the Colemans'. Jules felt relieved she hadn't had to deal with them. She had her holstered Glock, but she didn't want to have to kill them. Only if it was necessary.

  Jules followed the same route to Beckerman's house the Colemans had taken the day of the party. She had to alter her route once when she came across a large group of infected down one street.

  A block and a half from Beckerman's, a half-dozen infected began to follow Jules. She wasn't too worried. The infected moved slowly, and she thought she might have twenty minutes before they'd get to Beckerman's house.

  Beckerman's garage door was open, the jeep parked in the garage. He'd driven his Impala onto the pebbled front yard. Its back end stuck out onto the driveway, the driver side door open. Beckerman must have been out of it when he'd come home that day.

  Jules drove into the garage and parked next to the Jeep Cherokee. She transferred the boxes and the gas can and the rest of it into the jeep. Jules kept the half-empty box with food in it to take into the house.

  The door in the garage was locked. Jules lugged the box with her and checked the Impala. She kept her head on a swivel, keeping a wary eye on the street and the neighboring yards for any sign of the infected. She set the box down on the hood of the car and put her nose clips on. She checked the ignition inside the car, but the keys were gone. Beckerman had apparently remembered to take them with him inside despite the virus eating away at his brain.

  She glanced down the street at the infected. They were still more than a block away. When she arrived at the front door, Jules tried the door knob. It turned freely and she nudged the door open with the box, angling her head around the door to get a look inside. From what she could see, the living room was clear.

  She closed the door and locked it behind her. The landline phone lay on the floor next to the end table where Beckerman had dropped it. Next to the phone on the floor was a file folder, its contents spilled across the floor. Another file folder sat atop the end table. A few feet inside the door, Beckerman's navy suit jacket lay in a heap on the floor, one of its arms turned inside out.

  Jules set the box down and checked the pockets of the suit for the keys to the jeep. All she found was a ticket stub for his luggage.

  It felt strange being in Beckerman's home again. Last time she was here, the house was filled with life.

  Jules swept the file's pages back into their folder. The file belonged to George Albrecht. She set it on top of the end table. The other folder contained Andrew Glickman's file. Jules was surprised Beckerman had it. She wondered if Beckerman had revisited the possibility of Glickman as a suspect, though she found it strange.

  She had to find the keys and pack what food she could. She picked the box up off the floor. She knew where to look for the keys. On the day of the party, she remembered a narrow side table located in the hallway near the garage door and the bathroom. A large, thick glass ashtray had been there with keys in it.

  As she reached the side table in the hallway, Jules heard a muffled grunt. Startled, she turned. She stood perfectly still and listened. The sound had come from the far end of the hallway near the bedrooms. Next, she heard shoes scraping like sandpaper against the wood floor.

  Seconds later, Noah Beckerman appeared in the hallway, swaying unsteadily, chin pinned heavily to his chest. His rasping breaths filled the hallway. He leered at her with vacant eyes, and his arms dangled listlessly at his sides. Bile-colored strips of drool stained the white dress shirt he was wearing. His navy striped tie was loosened into a noose and hung lopsidedly down his chest.

  Jules let out a cry, not out of fright as much as dismay at the sight of him.

  Beckerman's cheeks were sunken as if some invisible force had sucked them inward. His face was the dingy gray hue of a rain gutter, its skin finely wrinkled. A pitiful, scratchy moan echoed through his throat. She noticed a bark-shaped chunk of skull missing from the side of his head where the bullet had ricocheted off his skull.

  Jules stood frozen in indecision, not sure what to do. Before she could decide, he was careening down the hallway toward her, his momentum increasing with each step.

  "No!" Jules yelled, as if her yelling could make him stop.

  As he lunged at her, she threw the box of food at him and pivoted into a side kick that struck him flush in the chest, but his momentum knocked Jules off-balance and he kept coming. She tried to kick him again, but he was too close and her shin glanced off his arm. Beckerman barreled into her, knocking her into the side table. She grabbed at the table as she fell and pulled it on top of her. The ashtray crashed into the wall and dropped to the floor.

  Jules held the table li
ke a shield as Beckerman fell onto her. She managed to push the edge of the table-top into his neck to keep him at bay, but Beckerman's weight pressed the table-top onto her clavicle, pinning her. She kept both hands on the table-top to keep it from crushing her clavicle. He grabbed clumsily at her face and hair and Jules twisted her head to get away. She closed her eyes as he groped her face.

  She let a hand loose from the table to reach for the Glock, but her holster and gun were pinned by a table leg.

  Beckerman climbed past the table-top and craned his head toward her. In a panic, she tried pushing the table up, but he was too heavy. He swung his hand clumsily at Jules' head and snagged a patch of her hair. Jules violently tore her head away from his grip and felt the hair being ripped from her scalp. The ashtray was on the floor next to her. She grabbed it and slugged him in the head. He grumbled and leaned in closer. Jules shut her eyes tight. She screamed and hit him with the ashtray again and again, screaming louder with each blow. She wasn't sure how many times she'd hit him.

  She felt something hot and wet dripping onto her face, and no matter which way she turned, she couldn't get away from the dripping.

  Jules realized he'd stopped moving, probably some time ago. She turned her head to the side and opened her eyes and stared at the wall. She couldn't look at him. Finally, she took a breath. Then, with as much energy as she could muster, she grunted and pushed the table up as far as she could and worked herself out from under the table and Beckerman.

  Jules lay on her side, back to Beckerman, curled in a fetal position. A vibrant pain pulsed from her collarbone. She massaged it gently with the tips of her fingers. She felt the warm liquid slide down her cheek to the side of her nose. She felt it on her upper lip too. She knew she had to get rid of it and do it quickly.

  She kept her face perfectly still, not wanting the liquid to find her mouth or eyes. Carefully, she pushed herself up off the floor, keeping her head still. With head tilted, she walked to the bathroom.

  She scrubbed her face and neck with a washcloth and soap till her face felt raw. The liquid was muddy brown and Jules assumed it was Beckerman's blood. She was sure none of it had gotten into her mouth or eyes. Her Quantico t-shirt was stained with his blood spatter. She carefully removed it and threw it into the bathtub.

  Jules stared at herself in the mirror. A patch of pin-sized, strawberry petechiae was sprinkled along her clavicle where the blood had already risen to the surface. Jules touched her collarbone and winced. A clump of hair was missing from the side of her head, and her skin was bright red where the hair had been ripped out.

  An image of Beckerman barreling down the hallway flashed in her mind. Jules' chin began to tremble. She stiffened and clenched her jaw. She didn't have time for this.

  The house had become dead silent. Jules wondered if any of the infected had heard their struggle. The memory of the sounds came back to Jules in an audio montage. The cry she'd made when she first saw him, his pitiful rasping moans, her yelling at him to stop, the ashtray smashing into the wall, the screams she made when she hit him with the ashtray. They had to have heard her screams. She knew she had to get moving. Find the keys, she told herself. Get the food and get out.

  The keys were on the floor a few feet from his body. She'd heard them spill from the ashtray when it hit the wall. The key chain emblem had a silhouette of a jeep on it.

  In the kitchen, Jules gathered several cans of food from the pantry along with a couple bags of Fritos Corn Chips and a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She collected the food on autopilot and had to keep reminding herself to do it quickly. The bread and buns in the pantry were encrusted in mold, so she left them behind. Everything in the fridge was spoiled from the heat except for the bottled water.

  Reluctantly, Jules went to the room Beckerman had come out of. She wanted his Glock, and it was the first thing she spotted when she entered the room. It lay on the floor. Jules set it in the box with the food.

  Several spots of dried blood stippled the wood floor. Jules glanced up and saw a leafy pattern of blood spatter on the ceiling along with a bullet hole.

  Against the far wall sat a mahogany desk with a computer monitor and a printer atop it. Papers were strewn haphazardly across the desk. A three-drawer file cabinet sat next to the desk. Propped against the wall to Jules' left was a gun cabinet filled with rifles and a shotgun.

  Jules couldn't find a key to the cabinet. She knew she was running out of time. She broke the glass with the butt of Beckerman's Glock. She didn't worry about the noise because she knew they were coming. She grabbed the shotgun, an FBI-issued Remington 870. In the cabinet drawer she found a box of shells for the Remington along with an extra magazine for the Glock.

  Almost as an afterthought, Jules stopped in the living room to grab the folders from the end table.

  Jules hadn't looked at him yet. Beckerman lay face down on the side table, arms dangling onto the floor. A pattern of fresh blood sprinkled the wall where the side table had stood. Jules knelt down next to him and fingered the thread around her finger. She knew Beckerman wasn't really there, but she talked to him as if he were. "I'll find him, Noah," she whispered softly. "I promise. No matter what happens, I'll find him."

  She was nearing the door to the garage when she heard the moans. She couldn't tell how many infected were in the garage. The only thing she knew for sure was that none of them were near the door. She set the box down on the floor and drew her Glock.

  She was reaching for the knob when she realized she was only wearing a bra.

  Jules took a breath and refocused. She turned the knob and quietly pushed the door open. There were three of them. The nearest one had his face pressed against the jeep's passenger side window. He lisped noisily as if he had a cold. The other two were checking out Jules' Impala.

  Jules walked to the front of the jeep and quickly chambered a round. She aimed the Glock in the direction of the male gray. He wasn't in her field of fire yet.

  The man spotted her and straightened up. He couldn't have been more than five feet tall. His lisping moans spiraled when he saw her. He had a smoky gray face cracked haphazardly like a dry desert floor. His mouth was filled with small filthy teeth.

  He moved toward her and raised a crusty hand. When he was no more than four feet away, Jules shot him in the head and he collapsed to the ground.

  She shifted her stance and aimed the Glock at the other two. The two infected by the Impala were women, one older, one younger. They were filthy and incredibly thin. Layers of silvery dust caked their clothes and tangled hair. They stumbled toward Jules, moving like decrepit old women. Jules steeled herself, and as they neared, she shot them in the face.

  Jules stared at the three of them to make sure they were dead. The two women lay in a heap on the floor like a pile of dirty rags. Jules stood spellbound, unable to take her eyes off them. She was having difficulty assimilating what had happened.

  She looked toward the driveway. She heard more of them coming. They were getting close. Jules had to rouse herself to move. She retrieved the box and set it in the back seat with the other boxes. She put the file folders on the passenger seat and the shotgun on top of the folders.

  She backed out of the driveway recklessly, only half aware of what she was doing. Two infected lumbered up the driveway. As she backed out, Jules hit one of them with the jeep's back fender, sending him spinning to the ground.

  She raced through the neighborhoods in a daze, hardly aware of what she was doing. She couldn't wait to get out of Henderson. Her plan was to drive to the southern edge of Henderson and go off-road onto the desert till she bypassed the roadblock on highway 93. Once past the roadblock, she'd take 93 to Kingman. The drive through Henderson was uneventful save for a block where she'd had to drive onto a lawn to avoid a group of infected in the street. It took her less than fifteen minutes to reach the desert.

  The roadblock barrier was made up of a dozen police cars. Twenty or so smashed up cars had punctured the barrier. Adjacent to it,
a fleet of cars fanned out from both sides of the freeway, littering the desert floor. The cars were covered in desert dust and riddled with bullet holes. Badly decomposed bodies, mostly bones now, lay scattered across the desert floor. A scattering of buzzards picked at the bones. Jules passed a station wagon with two infected inside, a woman and a young boy, their faces pressed against the dusty windows, clawing at the glass.

  She passed the roadblock and drove the Cherokee onto highway 93. She didn't see any cars after that. After forty-five minutes, Jules pulled over, angling the car halfway onto the shoulder of the road.

  She retrieved a t-shirt and put it on. She sat in the car a minute before getting out.

  A dense wave of heat from the early morning sun radiated through her and Jules felt nauseous. The sun was already stiflingly hot. She sat on the side of the road in the shade of the Cherokee and pulled her legs tight into her body. She wrapped her arms around her legs. She settled her chin on the top of her knees and stared into the distance at nothing.

  Jules couldn't rid herself of the terrifying image of Noah Beckerman barreling down the hallway at her, and she couldn't forget what she'd had to do in order to survive.

  She could feel her emotions brimming at the surface. She was on the verge of tears, and for once, she didn't fight them. She buried her head between her thighs and began to cry.

  Chapter 39

  Killer in Camp

  Nikki lay on the carpeted floor in the office, arms crooked like angel wings next to her head, her interlaced hands cupping the back of her head as if she were lying in a mountain meadow leisurely watching the clouds pass by. Her legs were crossed casually above the ankles.

  They knew in advance who it would be. Nikki's father had contacted Heath first thing in the morning and told Heath that Nikki had disappeared during the night.

  That morning when Jules and Addy had left their tent to head for breakfast, they ran into Heath and Dallin and Mayor Nichols standing outside their tent. Heath was a reading a note to himself. Heath looked up at Jules. "Found this pinned to your tent flap," he told her.