The Undead Chronicles (Book 1): Home and Back Again

by O'Brian, Patrick J.

  Metzger fell into his thoughts as the eulogy continued, wondering if Bryce indeed called, and if so, why the call was dropped. His brother wouldn’t attempt the call if he was compromised in any way, or in the middle of danger, unless it was his last-ditch effort before communications were lost.

  He felt consumed with worry, unable to concentrate on what should have been Albert’s moment when those who knew him said farewell. The ceremony ended soon enough with Luke placing the natural grave marker at the head of the plot. Metzger figured within a year the marker would succumb to the elements and no one would ever know that a good man and a farming couple were buried beside the barn. Their bodies would provide food for the worms and bacteria eventually, while many of the undead denied the natural chain of decomposition by walking upright.

  Lots of history was destined to be lost in the new world. Before the collapse of civilization, people could type in a few words online and discover anything about any person, or any event that history recorded. Now the world remained in fragmented colonies that would likely never meet one another.

  By the time the entire eulogy ended, Metzger still hadn’t received another call on his phone, which worried him greatly. Most of the group shuffled back to the house to begin gathering their belongings and what supplies they required for the next leg of their journey. Sutton had made it clear that he wanted to get moving with his supply truck toward his camp, and Metzger dared not linger, particularly if his brother landed in Norfolk only to find trouble awaiting his ship full of sailors.

  Still holding the sat phone in his hands, wandering in the direction of the barn, Metzger anticipated another call, still wondering if the disconnection might have somehow been his fault.

  “Watching a pot doesn’t make it boil,” a voice said behind him.

  He turned to find Luke standing there with the folded piece of paper between two fingers, looking both somber and strengthened at the same time.

  “I keep feeling like I screwed it up,” Metzger admitted. “I don’t even dare touch the thing in case another call comes in.”

  “Here,” Luke said, motioning for the phone.

  Metzger reluctantly handed it over, and Luke pushed a few buttons on the front before handing it back.

  “It works very much like a cell phone,” he said. “There’s your missed call.”

  Metzger stared at it, finding the number familiar as one his brother had used from the Ross to call him previously. He felt even more disheartened for having missed the call.

  “He’ll call back,” Luke said as though reading his mind, or at least his body language.

  “I can only hope.”

  “I think the others are getting ready,” Luke said, obviously trying to coax Metzger into taking action.

  “I just hope I’m not leading all of you into some kind of deathtrap.”

  “None of us are in chains being dragged along, you know.”

  Metzger smirked.

  “I know, but usually leaders have promises and guarantees. I can’t offer much of anything, which makes me a pretty shitty leader.”

  “You’ve kept us alive out here in the open, and you survived an entire month on your own, which makes you stronger than most.”

  Metzger stepped toward the house, and Luke walked along with him.

  “I was ready to let you move forward with Samantha and make a go of it here,” Luke confessed. “Albert told me to stick with you, to trust in you, because I was too good to stay here, chained to a corpse.”

  A tear came to Luke’s eye.

  “I spent twelve years building a life with that man, finally in a neighborhood that didn’t hate us, finally getting our home the way we wanted it. Things hadn’t gone so well for me before Albert. He helped provide, he took care of our garden, and he was my rock who listened to me whenever I had a shitty day at work, or some gay basher gave me a hard time. Albert was the better of us. You wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for him, because I didn’t want to stop for you. Knowing what I know now, I was wrong for that. That makes me a piece of shit human being, I know.”

  “Then we’re all pieces of shit, Luke,” Metzger assured him. “We all have those momentary lapses in judgment.”

  “I wanted to blame you for what happened to Albert after he was bitten, for taking us out of the only happiness I’ve ever known, but in truth what happened to him is my fault.”

  “Your fault?” Metzger questioned with a raised eyebrow.

  “I held him back. We stayed at that house for too long and it’s because of me.”

  “Luke, you had an eight-year-old to care for. The open road is no place for a kid, believe me. I haven’t seen many kids in my travels.” He hesitated momentarily. “Not many that were breathing anyway.”

  Metzger hung his head after the last statement, thinking of the horrific memories that flooded his dreams on a nightly basis.

  “It’s my fault because this whole world scares me,” Luke lamented. “Most of my arguments were with computers before, not with zombies trying to rip me apart with their teeth. The truth is, I’m scared to keep going, not for Samantha, but for me.”

  “You don’t think I’m not scared too?”

  “But you’ve dealt with this. It’s almost second nature to you.”

  Metzger scoffed at the notion.

  “I’ve been dealing with them a few at a time, careful to avoid the larger herds of them. When we get to Norfolk, I’m worried about what we’re going to find there if the military hasn’t cleared them out sufficiently.”

  Luke appeared to find a little comfort knowing he wasn’t the only one gravely afraid of the undead.

  Both men entered the farmhouse, finding everyone busy packing up supplies and personal belongings. Metzger discovered it was just past nine in the morning, leaving them plenty of daylight to get a start on the day. Personally, he needed to pack only a few weapons, since the remote car opener remained in one pocket, and the sat phone hadn’t yet left his left hand since Luke handed it back to him. He felt a bit lost in all of the commotion, waiting for his brother to call back any second, knowing he needed to start moving southeast.

  Finally snapping out of his trance, Metzger walked throughout the house to gather his items and see if anyone else required any assistance. Most everyone appeared to be making headway, so he approached Sutton in the ground floor bedroom about driving arrangements, knowing they needed to take the truck he found along the road until something roomier crossed their path.

  “Does your offer still stand to travel partway through the state?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Sutton answered. “You folks don’t seem like the types to try and rob me blind.”

  “I think we can make do for a while with what we have.”

  Sutton took an armload of items and headed for the door with Metzger following, carrying his own bundle. When they reached the barn, Sutton opened the doors to reveal his box truck once more, placing his items inside the cab.

  “Look, there’s something I need to ask you about that’s been bugging me,” Metzger confessed, drawing a slightly perplexed stare from the man.

  “Shoot.”

  “When I went down to the plane I encountered a few undead wandering around the area,” Metzger said before hesitating slightly. “One of them was a soldier who’d been stabbed in the heart, and it looked like he died from that wound.”

  Saying nothing, Sutton turned to fidget with something inside the cab once again, as though stalling for time or avoiding the inevitable question.

  “Gracine killed him if that’s what you’re after,” Sutton said almost casually, still moving something around inside the cab.

  Metzger absorbed the words, not quite sure what to ask next.

  “You seem to have me pegged as some kind of bigot, sexist, homophobe who doesn’t like the military,” Sutton added. “So I can see why you’d jump to that conclusion. While a few of those things may be partly true, I’m no murderer.”

  “I
wasn’t judging,” Metzger said. “The soldier looked recently deceased, so I wondered if you’d crossed him in your travels.”

  “Gracine killed him when he tried to rape her,” Sutton said flatly after a few seconds of thought. “She probably wouldn’t appreciate me telling you any of this, so keep it under wraps, but when we met, a band of five National Guard types were about to have their way with her.”

  Metzger frowned, hating that the standard practices of the old world went to the wayside with the collapse of society.

  “What happened?” he dared ask.

  Sutton shut the truck’s door, looked toward the house, and seeing no one coming their way, began to relive the tale.

  “Well, before I discovered the ol’ truck here, I was in and out of vehicles, moving on foot sometimes. This happened to be one of those times, and I hear a commotion in the distance, so I’m careful, because you never know if it’s going to be living douchebags or the gut eaters, so me and my M-16 quietly approach using cover only to discover five assholes about to take turns dipping their sticks in Gracine.”

  Metzger questioned how Sutton wasn’t a writer with his colorful descriptions of absolutely everything, including the undead. He was slightly disturbed that anyone in the military or public safety realm would abandon their duty statements just because no one remained to judge them.

  “I observed them a moment to see if there was any regret among the five,” Sutton said slowly, crafting his words to effectively convey his meaning, and not because he harbored regrets. “There wasn’t any turning back for any of them, and from what I noticed they each appeared to have a grayish-purple hue in their skin. Gracine said later she heard one of them say they’d breathed in some of the fumes near one of those factory incidents. So I guess they were on the way out, but wanted to have some fun first.”

  “Who does that?” Metzger questioned aloud.

  “I didn’t take the time to ask about their motivations. The one was already down on top of Gracine about to do his thing, and his buddies weren’t keeping particularly sharp watch. I knew if I gave myself away they’d shoot me full of holes, so when the best opportunity came my way, I started shooting each of them in the head.”

  Sutton finally hesitated, the weight of taking human lives tugging at his conscience.

  “Three of them were down by the time the fourth pulled his sidearm, but he didn’t really know where to aim. He never had time to fire or take cover before I nailed him, too. This gave Gracine an opportunity to stab the last one, but she didn’t get him right in the heart. He suffered, and she said it served him right. As I helped her up we both made the decision to leave him there to turn and rot away because he’d have time to think about his brief future.”

  Looking from the ground to Metzger, Sutton’s face registered a bit of surprise.

  “That was three days ago and about ten miles down the road,” he admitted. “That dude must’ve been steady walking after he died, or something drew him this way.”

  “Maybe the sight of a plane,” Metzger thought aloud.

  “Maybe.”

  Sutton looked to the house again before patting the side of the truck a few times.

  “Why are you saddling yourself down with these people?” he asked Metzger out of the blue.

  “You say that like they’re a burden.”

  “A gay dude, a kid, a girl barely out of her teens, and an injured pilot. You could blow this pop stand and stake out on your own without any worries.”

  “I realize you have a grand plan to see your family, and you’ve got all of these prepper techniques, food, and supplies ready to go, but the rest of us don’t have it so easy,” Metzger said, struggling to keep a calm, controlled voice, because he wasn’t thrilled about the comment. “The man we just lost was an emergency room nurse, and gay or not, he was very handy in a pinch.”

  “Hey, I’m not judging,” Sutton said, holding up his hands defensively. “I’m just wondering why you’re with a group that isn’t better equipped.”

  Metzger exhaled audibly through his nose.

  “My first month on the road was hell, and when I did spot groups, they weren’t usually the types I wanted to associate with. Two of these people saved me from certain death, so I returned the favor, and the others just chose to tag along. I was lucky to find a pilot, or I might not have gotten down here for another month. It feels good to finally have some people I can trust, and call me naïve, but maybe I’m looking to the future and reestablishing humanity in some fashion. I don’t want to do that with a group of assholes.”

  “There isn’t going to be humanity like we knew it,” Sutton said almost bitterly. “It’s going to get biblically violent before it ever gets better.”

  Metzger found it difficult not to agree with the man’s take, already seeing murder and forms of slavery during his travels.

  “Without technology to guide us,” Sutton added, “we’re barely better than the Stone Age, and it’s going to take half a century to get people to cooperate, and another half to get groups to reverse engineer things to get the world up and running again.”

  Their conversation came to an abrupt end as Gracine exited the house with a pack strapped around her shoulder, walking in their direction. Samantha stood at the door momentarily before following, as though taking a liking to a strong female rather than Luke. Metzger felt bad, because he knew Luke was mourning, and probably didn’t need another person turning away from him, but Luke also needed time to discover his purpose and place.

  “I think everyone’s ready,” Gracine said, almost without turning her head, as she passed the two men to place her items in the back of the pickup truck.

  Samantha stayed close on her heel, prompting Metzger to believe the girl might learn a thing or two from Gracine. Although she struggled, the girl lugged a pack with her, trying her best to help.

  “You’d pass on having that around?” he asked Sutton.

  “In a heartbeat,” the man answered without emotion. “It’ll slow you down and be the death of you. Mark my words.”

  Metzger shook his head, thinking no man should be an island with so much danger lurking everywhere.

  Everyone loaded up within half an hour, bringing some necessary items from the farm like a chainsaw, a few heavy chains and tow straps, and some tools that might prove useful for striking the undead in their skulls. Metzger drove the pickup truck with Jillian seated beside him after Luke volunteered to ride in the back with Vazquez. Samantha and Gracine were permitted to ride with Sutton until he reached his destination further south. Buster was crammed in the cab as well, giving Samantha something to keep her occupied. The group had discovered an old road atlas in the house that covered the entire country, so Metzger asked Jillian to read the Virginia map to make certain Sutton led them in the correct direction.

  Sutton already possessed maps, along with existing knowledge of some Virginia highways, but Metzger still felt leery of the man’s agenda. As he steered toward the highway, following the box truck, he took one last, long glance at the Cessna, which remained surrounded by pumpkins and a few undead. He wished the plane could have taken them further down the line, but felt thankful they all survived the crash and found refuge for the evening. Having an idea what awaited them on the highways, Metzger felt his heart sink because he knew the journey to Norfolk wasn’t going to be as simple as a leisurely drive over the course of a few hours.

  During the first portion of their travels, rural roads and highways proved favorable and reasonably easy to navigate. Once they stopped to cut a fallen tree out of the middle of the road with the chainsaw, discovering a small truck with four-wheel-drive for Vazquez and Luke to drive. Devoid of any undead inside, the truck held a few extra supplies, and as an added bonus, didn’t have blood smeared across the dash or windows like some abandoned vehicles. Both men were visibly relieved not to be traveling in the hard bed of the larger truck surrounded by gear.

  Metzger kept the sat phone on the seat beside him so
he didn’t need to fumble for it if another call came his way. He wondered why Bryce hadn’t tried contacting him again, growing worried about his brother’s safety. Common sense told him his brother was a ranking officer in the Navy, surrounded by men and women who knew how to handle weapons against the living or the undead. He also suspected they were more informed than anyone in the world about the current situation, short of government leaders.

  Sandwiched in the middle, Metzger followed Sutton’s box truck while Luke drove behind him, allowing Vazquez to rest in the passenger’s seat of the truck. The short convoy needed to drive only a few miles before they reached State Highway 17, which would take them virtually all the way to Norfolk, short of any necessary detours.

  “What are the chances this goes smoothly?” Jillian asked while Metzger swerved around a few abandoned vehicles, following Sutton’s lead.

  “Knowing our luck, I bet we run into a dozen or so snags before we reach the shipyard.”

  “What about Colby’s camp?”

  “What about it?”

  “Are we making a pit stop there?”

  Metzger looked to Jillian before shaking his head.

  “I don’t think we’re invited.”

  “He seemed to be coming around a little bit last night.”

  Metzger groaned.

  “Maybe he’ll come around. Why do you care if we see his camp anyway?”

  Jillian shrugged.

  “I guess I’m curious if it’s safer than all the other places we’ve been.”

  “It’s hard to think of anyplace as safe,” Metzger thought aloud. “I’m thankful whenever I get a full night’s sleep.”

  Jillian stared at the map off and on the next twenty minutes or so once the vehicles reached the highway. Metzger concentrated on every sign they passed, often asking Jillian if they were heading the right way until she gave a disgruntled sigh. Knowing to shut his mouth, because Sutton wasn’t leading the group astray, Metzger wondered why brake lights remained steady on the box truck as it drew to a complete stop.