“I can teach them all about basic firearms safety, loading both types of weapons, not to shoot themselves in the foot- I can do that in one big couple-of-hours-long session.”
“Sounds good,” Will said, “but...” He read Coy like a book and there was something he wasn’t saying.
“But the only way to teach someone to shoot is to have them fire at a target a hundred times. That’s seven hundred rounds.”
“Not a problem,” Danny said with confidence. “We have ammo falling out of our assholes.”
“It’s the noise,” Tara said.
Coy nodded as it sunk in on the rest of them. “We’d bring creepers in from miles around.”
“So bring them in,” Danny exclaimed. “We’ll have three or four folks set up to put them down as they come in. Hell, use them as targets.”
“And what if half the dead back at the base got through the hole we left in the fence and are wandering through the woods? How long can we hold off 400 of them coming at us from all directions?”
“We did it at the base,” Danny claimed, but he sounded less sure of himself.
Will thought for a moment, then decided. “Teach the gun safety, find a way to make them understand how hard the guns kick, but no shooting.” He paused and looked pointedly at Danny for objections; none came, so he moved on.
“Food while we’re on the road?”
“How long do you figure we’ll be traveling?” Becky asked.
“We can make ten to twelve miles a day. If we don’t have to stop and nurse an injury or scavenge a great deal, it will take a month. And that’s if nothing goes wrong.”
He waited while Becky thought through all the factors involved.
“We have enough to feed everyone for thirty days, and there’s enough room if we spread it among all the packs.” She looked at Tara for confirmation.
“We won’t be gaining any weight,” Tara said with a wry smile, “But we have enough that no one will go hungry. For thirty days.”
“What about all that salt from the commissary?” Will asked them. “If we waited three days, sent Coy and a team out to gather all the fish and game they can, and then we salted it, how big a difference could that make?”
Coy perked up at the prospect of three solid days of hunting and fishing but Becky was shaking her head before Will finished.
“You’re adding too much time,” she told Will in a gentle tone. “Three days to hunt, another seven to ten to dry the meat. That’s an extra week and a half to two weeks. We’d have to eat during that time, it’ll take us into October to leave, November to get to Carthage- those we’ll be some cold nights, Will.”
“And if I could interject,” Jiri said with a grim smile, “I don’t think anyone would be too comfortable with being stationary here for two weeks. Especially with Will’s 400 creepers stumbling through the woods.”
George clapped him on the shoulder with a big meaty hand. “I’m with this man here. Gotta keep moving in this world if you don’t have walls around you and a roof over your head.”
Will was silent for a long minute. “It’s around nine,” he said, looking up at the sun. “Coy, gather up your class. Finish by dinner time. You two,” he pointed to Becky and Tara, “distribute the food. Danny and Jiri are in charge of ammunition. I don’t know how we will transport it- you have the morning to figure it out.
“That’s it, folks. After dinner, we hit the road.”
An air of excitement surged through the camp, and Clay and Brianne were caught up in it. Brianne had a bad case of the giggles, and Clay had a goofy grin plastered on his face most of the night. If things broke in the group’s favor- and God knew they were due for a break- the following night they would sleep indoors, with full bellies and the United States Army watching over them.
Wiry and strong, with an unruly mop of brown hair and a crooked nose, Clay was in the engineering program at the University of Kansas and a part-time bartender when the outbreak began. From time to time he sport-fucked Brianne, who lived in a shitty apartment near the bar where he worked.
When the university administration blasted an email to all students telling them that the school could no longer feed or protect them, Clay didn’t hesitate. He threw some clothes in a dorm room pillowcase and made a harrowing walk to his bar. The owner had locked the doors and left town earlier in the week, and Clay’s intent was to break in and steal the snub-nosed pistol the man kept on a plywood shelf beneath the register. He was nonplussed to find someone had thrown a large rock through the big picture window that faced the street. With his pillow cocked back over his shoulder as his only weapon, he stepped into the bar, glass crunching underfoot with each step. He found Brianne sitting at the bar, crying, with a shot glass and a whiskey bottle in front of her.
Clay approached with caution. When he got close, he noticed the bottle was a fifth of Pappy Van Winkle, the most expensive liquor in the bar.
“Brianne?”
Without turning, she blew her nose into a tattered Kleenex, then answered him. “I didn’t want the world to end without ever trying a $100 shot of whiskey.”
His heart melted a bit.
He got her back to her apartment and nursed her through her hangover the following day.
For three weeks, they lived happier than they had since they were children. The power was still on and in the mornings they ventured to a nearby market to pick out meals for the day. In the evenings they would hit the bar. Each night Clay expected to find it cleaned out, but it was always the same as they had left it the night before. He could only speculate that the rest of the students, factory workers and day laborers in the neighborhood had fled to somewhere else when things got bad.
Whatever the reason, they had the bar to themselves. They drank expensive craft beers and toasted one another with goblets filled with $400 wine. They experimented with European vodka brands and sipped private label scotch. A corner table in Brianne’s kitchen held a growing display of empty bottles. They enjoyed the alcohol, but in moderation. Clay said, and Brianne agreed, that it would be dangerous to over-imbibe. For the first time, they drank for enjoyment and not to get blasted.
They made love every night. Clay confessed that he had zero interest in being an engineer. He wanted to be a journalist, but he was desperate to get off his father’s farm and wasn’t confident he could do so on a journalist’s salary. Brianne told him he was the only person other than a high school boyfriend to call her the next day when they had slept together.
They saw creepers on three occasions. Each time they slipped into the shadows and remained quiet and motionless until the threat shuffled away in the distance.
As long as the power flowed, they filled their days with ease. Brianne’s TV was small, but that was okay- all that aired was static or confused and disjointed shit, anyway. Her musical tastes were eclectic, and the sounds of Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert filled the apartment one day, John Coltrane and The Doors the next. Clay had his Ipad and treasured power cord, and he spent hours playing Grand Theft Auto or Infinity Blade. He also spent several hours every day studying the tablet’s application. He committed a ten block radius around her building to memory and mapped out different routes to warmer climates. After all, the power wouldn’t stay on forever.
It went out on their twenty-fourth day in the apartment. Most of the meat and all the fresh vegetables at the market had already spoiled, and now the frozen foods went fast with no refrigeration. Soon they faced the choice of eating cold canned ravioli in the dark or venturing out of their neighborhood.
They ventured out. Clay’s plan was to head straight south on 59 highway, but abandoned cars filled all four lanes as far as he could see. They skirted east of the highway and a little north of Baldwin City they saw Becky, the first breathing person they’d seen in over a month.
Clay and Coy became fast friends and everybody liked Brianne. The group inched its way south, putting down creepers by the truckload. Three times they killed people that mea
nt them harm. They lost four group members to the dead. Clay crawled into the sleeping bag at night, exhausted and stinking, his clothes sometimes stiff with dried blood.
And now they were close to paying off those terrible months and letting the monstrous things he had seen and done fade into history. In the morning they would set out on a 150 mile trip to a place they could feel safe from the dead. Clay fervently believed they would find a haven there, because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
He snuggled close to Brianne and slipped his arm over her shoulder, then drifted off to sleep thinking about a place safe from the dead.
Chapter Eleven
* * *
Dawn crept up with the stealth of a lioness stalking her prey. Fingers of yellow, red and orange stretched across the eastern sky, pushing back the darkness. Will pulled a pair of jeans up over his long legs and picked a clean shirt from his pack. He wished fruitlessly for a cup of coffee; instead, he opened a can of chew, measured out a dip with his thumb and index finger, and slipped it inside his cheek. It was dry and bitter tasting. Not going to be any tobacco that’s fit to chew, soon, he thought with a sigh. Nothing like the end of civilization to cure a man of his bad habits. That brought to mind a story he heard as they were passing near Topeka.
He and Danny had trekked into the city to scavenge for food (it seemed like every day was a battle to find food back then) and they came across a young couple in a city park. They spent a while determining one another’s intentions, and then relaxed and had a long conversation. They invited the couple- Ed and Michelle- back to camp for supper, then invited them to join the group on the trip south. To Will’s surprise, the couple politely refused. Ed had said that they were Topeka residents born and raised and Topeka is where they would stay. They did agree to stay with the group long enough to guide them around the perimeter of the city, in exchange for meals and protection from the creepers and any other threats.
It took three days, and on one of thosedaysEd told them about a friend of his named Neil. Neil was a good guy, according to Ed, but he had a thirty-pill-a-day codeine addiction he’d carried for years. Neil’s friends knew about the habit.
“When Neil was coming over, you pulled the pain pills out of your medicine cabinet and hid your wife’s purse,” Ed said. “He wasn’t the type of guy that would go rifling through your drawers, but his addiction caused him to make bad choices if the opportunity to do so presented itself.
“It was two weeks into the epidemic,” he continued, “when society here started really breaking down. Major looting, there were fires every other block, no police presence at all. Hell, uniformed cops looted the grocery stores and gun shops alongside everybody else. I’m out one day during this mess because Michelle wanted us to stock up on bottled water. And I see Neil. He’s on the other side of the street, running in my direction and carrying a big pillowcase over his shoulder.
“I shouted at him and we met in the middle of the street. His eyes were glassy over and his pupils were huge- he was as high as I’ve ever seen him. He asks me what I’m doing and I explain I’m looking for water.
“’What are you doing? What’s in the bag?’ I ask him. He gives me this furtive look and peeks around to make sure no one is eavesdropping on us.
“’Look here, Ed,’ he says and opens his case to show me what’s inside. Damned if that pillowcase isn’t filled three-quarters of the way with pills. He’s got hydrocodone, Oxys, even those yellow pills that are full-on morphine. Thousands and thousands of pain pills.
“While the rest of Topeka worked at stockpiling food, water, and other things you need to survive, Neil went from pharmacy to pharmacy across the whole damned town, looting all the pain pills he could get his hands on. He grabs me by the shoulder and he’s got this big stupid grin on his face. ‘I’m set for life, Ed. I’m set for life!’ He says. Then he goes running off down the street. I never saw him again.”
Ed’s story had been funny and everyone had a good laugh, Will remembered. But now, thinking about it while he sat in the half-light, craving coffee with a wad of what tasted like dried raccoon shit tucked in his cheek, he admired Neil a little. There was a man that knew how to tend to his addictions.
The morning sun popped over the horizon in full. Pink and purple swirls gave way to yellow rays, and the sky threw off its shades and shadows as the day broke bright and clear.
Will stood in the shadow of the barn, a battered and worn down structure that had served as last night’s shelter. The group broke camp following lunch the day before and walked until dusk, clocking three miles. It sat behind a dilapidated farmhouse with a caved-in roof, situated a hundred yards off the road at the end of a gravel drive overrun with grass and weeds. Will cleared it, along with Danny and Tara. They inspected its corners and the loft and made sure the stalls were empty. They kicked up hay chaff and dust motes that had been collecting, undisturbed, for months. The grit danced in the yellow flashlight beams, tickled their noses, and made their eyes water.
They declared it to be creeper-free, and the rest of the group entered. They plugged away at their typical evening activities- setting up camp, preparing supper, breaking bread, doing what they could to clean off the day’s grime, and bedding down. Will laid next to Becky; she snuggled her backside against him and he threw one arm across her midsection. His mind swirled with things to do, worries, questions, and fears. It took a while to quiet it enough to get to sleep.
His internal alarm clock woke him at five the next morning, as it had for years. That was his favorite part of the day. He’d disentangle himself from his wife and grab some jerky or canned fruit. Regardless of the weather he’d find a comfortable spot close to the group’s shelter and eat his breakfast outdoors. After his meal, he would take a dip and watch the calm, splendid break of dawn.
By and large, this was Will’s time alone. Often he’d run into Coy setting off on a morning hunt or fishing trip. They’d exchange a few words, but seldom more than that. Coy didn’t have patience for small talk when there was a hunting spot or fishing hole waiting. Once or twice a week, someone from the group would join Will, looking to hash out a problem or present an idea. But most of the time it was just Will, the morning birds with their songs and chatter, and the coming sun.
There was the occasional early-morning dead to hassle with. All told, he’d put down two pairs of creepers and seven more wandering about on their own. He was careful to always stay within sight of the crew on watch duty should things get out of hand. The trip to Fort Leonard Wood found them ten miles south of Belton, Missouri, one icy and windy morning. There, he’d spent an hour on his belly amid tufts of dead grass, pressing himself as close to the frozen ground as he could while a herd of at least five hundred creepers shuffled by. The outer edge of the herd came within twenty feet of him, laying there trying not to move and sucking in tiny draws of air so his chest wouldn’t rise and fall. The biting wind chapped his lips and burned his face; his hands and feet at first burned, then grew numb. Once the herd wandered on, the watch team half carried, half dragged him into the Gas-N-Shop they’d slept in the night before. Three hours passed before he warmed enough to stop shivering.
Will sighed and spit his chew into the grass. Time to stop wool-gathering and get busy. He walked over to an outbuilding next to the barn. Clay and Tess sat on the building’s sheet metal roof- they had the third and final guard shift the night before. “Everything all right?” He asked them.
“Everything was fine,” Clay answered. “We tracked two creepers walking down the road headed east for a while, but they never got close so we didn’t wake anyone.”
Clay came up with the idea for the guard rotation way back in Kansas. He proposed rotating four-hour shifts, two guards to a shift, whenever they weren’t on the move. Willamendedthe plan to add a second pair of guards in places with heavy creeper activity.
“Well that’s what we want, isn’t it? Uneventful guard shifts?” Will smiled up at them. “Come on down, and let�
��s go see what sort of breakfast they’re getting together in there.” He gave them both a hand off the ladder; first Clay and then Tess. He took Tess’s hand and put his other hand on the small of her back for support. Her shirt had drawn up, leaving a bare spot above her waist. His rough hand touched the supple warmth of her skin and she drew a quick breath. Her face reddened like a well-banked fire and he looked away to hid his grin.
Tess Markland was seventeen-years-old, looked twenty-five, and was as sweet as a June strawberry. Straight blond hair fell past her shoulders and framed a cherubic face. Her almond-shaped eyes were a smoky shade of green, and her full lips surrounded a perfect set of blinding white teeth. Polite and soft-spoken, she had an angelic smile paired with an easy laugh. She drove Danny to distraction, and he’d almost turned lusting after her into a full-time job. Two things prevented him from attempting to act on his lust- Tess’s big sister, Tara, and Becky.
Tara had pulled him aside one day not long after she and her sister joined the group.
“You’re a good-looking guy, Danny, and you could charm the angels out of the sky. But if you ever touch my little sister I will knife you while you sleep.”
Danny took his hurt feelings to Will and Becky for sympathy. He told them what Tara had said, and his features swung from hurt to shock at Becky’s reply.
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