“I can’t count on that. It’s time to whip and drive these folks.”
“You can’t do that, Boss.” Danny was sitting with his back against the wall and his hat pulled down over his head. Will thought he was asleep.
“Too many of these people aren’t used to hard, physical activity. Then you put boots on them and a big ol’ heavy pack on their back and expect them to hike ten miles a day? Ain’t gonna happen. Can you picture Kathy or Brianne after a week of that?”
Will didn’t appear convinced, but he stopped raging and kept listening.
“We spent a half a day on the outskirts of Lebanon,” Danny went on, “two days in the woods and the fields on the other side of the interstate. We’ll make better time. Just stay with what we’ve been doing.”
Will’s drew a deep breath to calm himself and nodded slowly at Danny. “Okay. I reserve the right to change my mind, though.”
“Course you do,” Danny snickered. “You’re the boss.”
Before Will realized the insult and could formulate a response, Danny had pulled his hat back down and closed his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
After another night in the woods they got an early start, and at 10:30 made it to the first dirt road on their path to Buffalo. The trip through the backwoods proved uneventful. They only spotted two creepers, both far enough away that they passed by undetected.
The day was bleak and gray, with the sun hidden behind thick layers of clouds. A strong wind buffeted them, blowing leaves in crazy patterns, and a high bank of thunderclouds lined the north horizon. Will kept a nervous eye on the coming storm.
“Let’s find a place to bed down for the night in the next thirty minutes,” he told Jiri and Danny.
“It looks like slim pickings, boss,” Danny said, glancing around. There were no buildings in sight; there hadn’t been any since they found the road. All they saw were empty pastures and scrub grass with a few skinny, skeleton-fingered trees growing along the fence rows.
“It doesn’t have to be a house, a barn or shed will work,” Will said. “Hell, I’ll take anything with a roof. We don’t need a palace. Just someplace that will keep us dry.”
They walked another mile before it appeared- an old, weather-beaten barn silhouetted on the eastern horizon. Just then the clouds opened and pelted them with large, cold drops of rain. Lightning split the sky not far to their east and they hurried for the safety of the barn.
By the time they made the barnyard the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind drove the downpour into their faces. Will found the door on the barn’s south side and fought the wind to pull it open. He and Jiri were the last ones in. As they entered, large hailstones pelted the ground outside and pounded the barn’s tin roof like hundreds of angry fists.
The door slammed shut behind Will, hailstones banged on the roof, thunderclaps boomed across the sky, and people cursed and exclaimed as they shook off the rain and rid themselves of wet packs and jackets. Over the din, he almost missed it- a low, savage growl. Here we go again, he thought. He readied his knife and walked toward the source of the noise at the far end of the barn. There, backed up against the wall and standing over a young pup, stood the most pitiful golden retriever he’d ever seen. She was slattern thin, with her ribs showing through her dirty coat. Her front legs and snout bore the wounds of a recent fight. She growled at them and rolled her eyes. The group milled around behind him, murmuring to one another and giving Will advice.
“Coy, you’re the animal whisperer,” Will said, without taking his eyes of the pair. “Go to it.”
Coy worked for ten minutes before she let him approach her, and it took another fife before he could inspect her pup. “A little male,” he announced.
That’s how they ended up sharing their meager supper that day with a momma dog and her puppy, and how Sally and Stebbins joined the group.
They hit Highway 32 at around lunchtime and cleared a small farmhouse for the noon meal. Will was checking rooms down a short hallway when Tara shouted for him from the other end of the house. He rushed to the sound of her voice, careening into a back bedroom and bumping into Jiri, doing the same thing from the other direction. To their relief, she wasn’t in danger. Instead, she stared at a bed centered on the room’s back wall. One hand covered her mouth, and her blond hair swayed as she shook her head. Tears shined in her green eyes but didn’t fall.
Will gaped at the bed. His throat tightened and a lead ball settled in his stomach. A family of four laid side-by-side atop a comforter. The body of a young man was on the near side of the bed, a young woman on the far side. Between them were a small girl of about four and a boy that couldn’t have been more than two. They were laid out in their church clothes- Mom and daughter wore bright-colored dresses and Dad a tie and suit jacket with the buttons undone. Will’s heart ached as he looked at the little boy is his blue corduroys and sweater vest, with a collared tee shirt under the vest.
The woman and the children had neat, round holes in their foreheads; a thin trickle of blood ran from each hole. Dried blood and shiny, white chunks of skull littered the pillows under the backs of their heads. There was an old revolver in the man’s mouth and the top of his head was blown all over the headboard behind him. An empty glass and a prescription bottle sat on an old, rickety nightstand next to the bed.
Jiri walked to the nightstand, his boots clomping on the hardwood floor. He picked up the pill bottle, examined the label, and set it back down. “Sleeping pills,” he announced to no one in particular. “He gave them pills, and once they were asleep, he shot them in the head. Then he ate the gun. Fucking coward.”
“Choosing how you go out doesn’t make you a coward,” Tara said quietly. “He didn’t want to see his family torn to shreds... maybe tear them to shreds himself. He didn’t want to put his wife down after she turned.”
Jiri shook his head. “You fight till your last breath to protect your family. You don’t overdose them with Ambien and shoot them after they go to sleep. Not if you’re a man.”
Tara readied to speak and Will put a hand up to stop her. “You guys can argue the morality of life and suicide in the apocalypse later. Let’s check for food and medicine.”
He cast one last look at the tableau, then turned and walked from the room.
They set up camp that night in one of Will’s favorite types of places- a house at the end of a long, winding driveway. If I can’t get a barn, give me a secluded house hidden from the road, Will thought.
They’d dined on cold canned soup and beef jerky. It wasn’t steak and onion rings or Becky’s beef stew, but he’d eaten worse over the previous seven months. The house they were borrowing for the night was a doozy- he estimated it at 4,000 feet, with two stories and a half-finished basement. The design motif was leather furniture and cherry wood cabinets, with marble and brass touches throughout. A three-car attached-garage held a bass boat and a pair of ski-dos, but the best toy was in the basement. Highlighting the room was a nine-foot Brunswick Isabella pool table. A thing of beauty, it featured a red felt surface and with cherry, birch, and rosewood veneers, with mother-of-pearl rail sights. Justin proclaimed it a $40,000 table and established that he knew what he was talking about by beating all challengers with ease. He ran the table from the break to the eight ball twice, once against Will. He even crushed Danny, who’d won a chunk of money over the years hustling barrooms but was no match for Justin on the over-sized table.
Later, Will in a director’s chair out on the house’s wrap-around deck. A layer of pine needles covered the floor and spider webs hung from the corners. Empty planter boxes lined the railing.
The night was windless and unseasonably warm, and the stillness outside was like a benediction. They’d been getting a break with the weather. So far, the worst they’d endured was a few chilly nights and the occasional thunderstorm. It wouldn’t last, but he hoped to be more than halfway there before the first snow or hard freeze. Driving the group through
winter weather would be easier the closer they got to their goal.
The hinges on the door behind him squeaked gratingly as it swung open. He figured it was Becky or one of the fellas come to chat, so it surprised him to turn and see Sylvia.
“Well, hello there,” he greeted her.
Sylvia smiled a hello and offered Will a bottled water. “Can I bother you with some questions?”
“You can ask questions whenever you want, and you’re no bother.” He pulled a chair close and motioned to it. “Have a seat.” The darkness masked her features but the way she carried herself- arms crossed, shoulders square, ramrod straight posture- made her look either nervous or angry.
“Tempest is getting worse,” she said with no preamble. Three days ago the little girl developed a cough. At first, it was dry and hacking, but after the storm it took on a wet and phlegmy quality and her eyes took on the glassy brightness of a low-grade fever. “Her fever is spiking. I can’t get her to eat or drink and she went to sleep as soon we stopped walking.”
Will nodded. He knew about the cough and the fever. Tempest was a little bundle of energy who walked all day without complaint and ran around like a banshee once they set up camp. If she was lethargic, too, it was a bad sign.
“How are you treating her?”
“With Tylenol. That’s all we have.” She meant that as a simple fact, but it still punched Will in the gut.
He leaned back with his fingers laced behind his head. “Before the outbreak, it’d be fifty-fifty between a doc giving you a script for amoxicillin, and telling you the problem is viral and she needs to ride it out.”
“When you consider her lack of proper nutrition and our circumstances, I’d give her the medicine even if it is a virus. It couldn’t hurt.”
“I understand. But you know, everybody knows, our antibiotic situation. We look for them in every house we sweep. We have just had miserable luck in that regard.”
She stiffened, and he realized that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“I wouldn’t hesitate one second to find her some antibiotics if you felt that’s what she needed. We’d find a truck and go into Buffalo. I’ll do whatever is necessary to help your little girl.”
“That’s the other thing I’d like to talk to you about.”
“What’s that?”
“Why aren’t we driving, Will? We’ve walked down this highway for two days and seen three empty cars. Why are we walking five miles a day when we could drive to our destination in an afternoon?”
“That’s a good question, one I wanted to talk over with the entire group in the morning, but I’ll go over it with you now.” He thought for a moment, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and continued. “The answer is, it’s not as easy as that- getting in a car and driving away. Transportation for sixteen people and all this gear- that’s four or five vehicles to round up. Vehicles with charged batteries, fuel that hasn’t turned, and sitting on four full tires. So that’s a day, maybe two, to find them. And then we drive ten miles and come to a washed out bridge, or a traffic jam we can’t get around. Then what? Leave our cars behind, get past the obstacle, and spend another day or two hunting up new vehicles?
“Are you with me so far?”
Sylvia nodded.
“How many times have we had to leave the road since Lebanon? Four? Dashing off into the woods when you spot fifty creepers ahead of you isn’t an option for a caravan. You can’t sneak a line of trucks around a checkpoint set up by people that may not have the best of intentions. I’m not saying driving is a bad idea. I want you to see the reality of the situation the way I see it, the way we see it.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Sylvia asked.
“Me, Danny, Jiri. There are other things to consider, too. The noise factor. So far, we haven’t tried to sweep a house with living people in it. But that will happen someday and when it does, I want us to come up to the house quietly, not announce ourselves from miles away. If there’s trouble, people on foot can slip away and hide. A caravan can’t.
Sylvia nodded and looked at the floor of the deck, but said nothing.
“That’s not saying it’s a closed matter. This is something I think about every day. I’ll tell everyone else the problems with driving like I just told you, and if a majority wants to try it, that’s what we’ll do.
“And Sylvia,”- he leaned forward and grasped one of her hands in both of his- “we’ll do, I’ll do, whatever Tempest needs. We’re staying put right here until she’s better. And if you think antibiotics is what she needs, we’ll head out tomorrow to get them. I promise you that.”
She looked up at him and smiled, her dark eyes shining with tears. They stood and exchanged a warm hug, and he followed her inside.
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
They found an eight-passenger, four-wheel-drive Chevy Tahoe two houses to the south of the one they occupied. The truck’s gas gauge read three-quarters full, its oil looked clean, and the tires looked new. The engine turned right over when Will turned the key and the truck rumbled to life. He declared it good to go, and they climbed aboard- Will, Clay, Danny, Coy, and Casandro, with Jiri behind the wheel. Each man carried a rifle and a handgun, and they packed enough ammunition to pull off a coup in a small Caribbean country. Danny found a Buffalo phone book in a cubby near a wall-mounted phone back at the house. In the yellow pages, tucked away beneath quarter-page ads for a trio of big-box-store pharmacies, was a small listing one for a family pharmacy right on Highway 32. It meant almost a straight shot, there and back.
They hit the road loaded for bear and prepared for anything. Naturally, the drive in was uneventful.
The Tahoe cruised along at forty-five miles per hour for almost all the seventeen mile trip to town. They took it off-road twice; once to get around a semi and its trailer sitting lengthwise across the highway, and a second time at an intersection that told a terrible tale.
Two cars, a late model Camry and an old Ford, collided head-on. The two passengers in the Camry were unconscious or unable to get out of the car. Creepers tore them apart, still buckled in their seats. The Ford contained four passengers. Two were mutilated almost beyond something he recognized as human; the other two had turned. They sat strapped in the front seat, confined there by their shoulder harnesses and lap belts. The accident looked months old, and the dead had been trapped there since it occurred.
They snarled and snapped their jaws at him and their eyes rolled in their sockets. One of them snapped so viciously that it broke off both of its front teeth at the gum line. Will watched them and shook his head in wonder, unaware he had yet to see the worst.
The familiar snarling sound of the dead drew him to the other side of the Camry. A creeper laid in the road on its stomach, pulling itself along by its arms. It looked up at him with one cloudy eye; the other socket was empty. Drool hung in strings from its cracked, black lips. The creeper was just a head and a torso, its body gone from the waist down. Ropy chunks of intestines and strips of flesh hung from its midsection and left wet, gory streaks on the pavement. It croaked and growled and reached for him with a shaky hand. The act caused it to lose its balance and keel over to one side and its face hit the concrete with a wet splat. It looked back up, its teeth broken and its nose dangling over its top lip, attached to its face with a just a thin strip of skin. Still, it snarled and drooled, dragging itself forward inch by inch.
One by one the other men came around and stood by Will, until the six of them stood in a row, looking at the spectacle before them. For a time the only sound was the snarls, groans, and moans of the creeper, and then Danny spoke.
“You know, if nothing else you have to admire their commitment.”
Will walked to the creeper. He grabbed its grasping hand by the wrist and held it to the ground. He pulled his knife from its sheath and bent over it, taking care to avoid its head.
In a gentle voice, he said, “You’ve earned this,” and slid the knife deep in its ear. Jiri and
Clay put down the dead in the Ford, and the team climbed back in the Tahoe and continued west.
Tara was angry, Tara was pissed, Tara was livid. And when Tara was angry, pissed, and livid, stewing to herself was not her way. She let people know what was on her mind.
“Will. Danny. Jiri. Coy. Clay. Andro.” She was standing beside an above-ground pool in the backyard, drinking a cup of instant coffee that tasted like shit and speaking to Becky in a stage whisper. “Those are all our shooters, all our fighters. If creepers hit this place it will be you, me, and Justin fighting them off.” She stepped closer to Becky and took her by the arm. “And for what? A child. They left us exposed and went off to face God knows what for the benefit of the only member of the group who’s not self-sufficient.”
“Tara!” Her eyes wide, Becky touched her hand to her heart. “You are talking about an eight-year-old girl! What do we do now- leave sick children on the side of the road?”
“Not at all.” Tara’s blond locks swung in the sunlight as she shook her head. “She has a mother. If she needs medicine then send her mother and one shooter. You don’t risk the safety of the whole group.”
Tess stepped over and stood beside her sister, listening with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Why is her mother still here, by the way?” Tara continued. “Why isn’t she out helping get the medicine her daughter needs?”
Becky raised her hands to her sides, palms up, and raised her eyebrows. “Because she’s taking care of her sick daughter?”
Tara waved the answer away. “The best way for her to take care of her daughter is to make sure she gets the medicine she needs. She should be out there handling her business.”
Journey Page 13