Kelly ran past the bodies of the Zombies Randy had killed and tripped running through the overgrown ditch. Zoey and her both fell into the rock and mud-covered bottom of the ditch. Kelly tried to hold onto Zoey and ended up losing her pistol in the tall weeds. She picked up Zoey and tried to find the pistol until Randy bumped into her. He hissed at her to leave it because they needed to get out of sight immediately. Recognizing the wisdom of his words Kelly hitched Zoey up on her shoulder and followed Randy into the woods being much more careful of where she stepped this time.
Once they’d all made it into the woods Randy took the lead. He had a marginally better sense of direction than Kelly did but more importantly his body was better at breaking through the briars and spider webs. If they wandered blindly into a Zombie nest, he wanted to be the one in the lead as well from a fighting perspective. For someone who’d never been in a real fight until the Zombie apocalypse he was definitely a quick learner. Kelly said he was just naturally mean. Whatever it was he felt like you could throw him in any biker bar in the old USA and he’d be able to hold his own now.
They pushed on through the dark until they ran into the highway. Zombie noises still audible all around them. It was nighttime but all the shooting had kicked off a Zombie rave. Randy turned right at the highway to go north and started walking along the edge of the woods. He wanted to be able to get the group to duck into the woods to hide if they needed to but also knew they needed to make decent time, or they risked being found out in the morning.
He led them up the side of the road occasionally having them stop and stay quiet when he heard something. They passed two large pickup trucks parked on the side of the road, but both were missing the keys. Kelly complained she should’ve married a car thief instead of a computer programmer. If she had, she may be riding right now instead of stumbling through overgrown weeds weary of stepping on a sleeping Zombie. They’d rummaged around in the trucks trying to find keys and anything else of value and ended up with some waters and granola bars. Randy had been careful to make sure that the trucks didn’t look looted. No sense in making it easy on the Brotherhood to figure out which direction they were headed.
The highway split off and Randy bore to the right. They’d been at it a few hours and nerves were frayed. Everyone was tired and aching. They were making minimal progress with all of the stumbling they were doing. Kelly had hurt her ankle when she fell earlier so that was slowing them down as well. When they ran into a two-lane road that disappeared into the woods Randy didn’t have to think twice about leading his family down it. He’d already been nervous as hell walking down the main road in plain sight of anyone who happened to drive by with NVGs on. If they had headlights on, he figured they could jump out of the way and hide in plenty of time.
They walked down what Kelly considered one of the worlds darkest roads for another forty minutes before seeing an asphalt paved single lane private drive leading off it. They crossed the street and headed down the small drive. Randy took the first dirt and weed covered driveway on the left to walk up to a house that’d probably looked old and crappy way before any of this Zombie stuff happened. A decrepit looking RV was parked behind the large two-story home. The RV was sitting at a crazy angle on three deflated tires with some wooden fence posts propped against it. In the dark it was impossible to tell what color the house was painted but it was possible to see that all the paint was flecking off it. There was a big shed in the side yard that Randy was hoping might contain what he was looking for.
The shed had a rusty padlock holding the two aluminum doors on the front of it shut. The roof looked like it’d been half blown off though so Randy boosted Myriah up to see if she could look down into the shed and see anything. She shoved her head bravely into the massive pile of dust and cobwebs with a flashlight they’d found back in one of the trucks in the glove compartment. She saw piles of tools on the workbench and a riding mower with a wagon attached to it. She saw what might be jugs of gas for the mower as well. Not seeing anything else she climbed down and let her mom and dad know what she’d seen.
“Worth making a lot of noise for?” Kelly asked.
“Maybe but I was hoping for something a little speedier than a riding mower. We don’t want to be slow and loud. Fast and loud would be ok. Let’s keep looking. If it was easy to get in, I’d say let’s get some of the tools for weapons and to help us break into other places but yeah.” Randy let the sentence hang and started walking towards the attached two car garage on the bottom right of the home.
Kelly and the rest of them followed along. Myriah busily trying to shake and rub all the cobwebs and dirt out of her hair. She was pretty relieved her dad hadn’t asked her to try and wiggle into the shed and grab them out some tools. She’d almost volunteered to do it until realizing how much it would suck. She wasn’t completely sure she could do it silently either. She sped up to catch up with her dad who was now standing and staring at the garage doors. He waved for Myriah who came over and they repeated the process except this time she just had to look through the windows on the garage versus sticking her head into the opening scene of an arachnophobia film.
She couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought she might see what her dad was looking for. One side seemed to be covered in camping gear and some kind of vehicles with tarps covering them. The shelves on that side were completely covered in boxes and bags of random junk that bled down into where the possible vehicles they were looking for were sitting with covers on them. The other side of the garage was taken up by a small sedan. That was the only car they’d seen on the property which made them all hopeful that no one was home. This time her dad was a lot more excited about what she’d seen.
He immediately started trying to lift the garage doors. Neither of them budged when he pulled on them. They held a whispered conference to discuss how to get in. Breaking a window on the garage door seemed like it’d cause a lot of noise for possibly zero reward. There was no guarantee once they broke it that they’d be able to squeeze anyone through it or be able to reach the emergency release rope to unlock the door. They decided to go in the house and work their way to the garage that way. Kelly and Randy got Caitlyn and the kids comfortable and out of sight on the side of the home then walked around to the back.
The back of the house was framed by a big wooden deck. The deck felt like all the wood was rapidly rotting away. The owners must not have believed in spending a bunch of money on sealant. Randy and Kelly cautiously ascended the rickety stairs. At the top was a row of sliding glass doors and windows. Looking at the sliding glass doors Kelly saw the people had shoved wooden posts in the bases of them, so they didn’t bother trying to wedge those open. She always wondered how many people got robbed paying eighty bucks a month for a security system because they didn’t have the wooden posts in their sliding glass doors. Low tech for the win!
They couldn’t get in through the doors which left breaking a window as the next option. There may be other options but so far breaking a window had always worked. Randy picked up a metal chair off the dilapidated porch and got ready to swing it. Kelly grabbed his arm to keep him from swinging it then checked all the windows to make sure they were locked. When she couldn’t get any of them to open, she shrugged and stepped back.
Randy rammed the leg of the cheap little metal chair into the windowpane that should be right above the lock for the window. The glass in the windowpane shattered making entirely too much noise. He stepped back and Kelly went to check and see if she could reach the lock and get the window open. She got up to the window then jumped back like she’d accidently tinkled on an electric fence. Randy looked at her oddly setting the chair down and making sure he could get to the machete on his belt. He walked up close to the window trying to be as quiet as possible so he could take a peek in. He couldn’t see inside due to a lime green curtain covering the broken window on the inside.
Using the barrel of his rifle he gingerly moved the curtain over to the side and tried to take a look in. He
hesitated to put his face too close as he kept envisioning a long arm snaking out and grabbing him by the hair then pulling him into the hole. He looked over at Kelly who was standing there staring at him. The look on her face made it obvious there was no way in hell she was getting near that hole. The impatient expression also made it glaringly apparent she fully expected him to hurry up and stick his head in to take a looksie. Sighing, he moved closer to the hole and the low intense growling noise coming from it.
He looked in but still couldn’t see anything. The sun was starting to come up, so it wasn’t totally dark outside anymore. He could see the floor and counters over on the side of the house the windows were on. The side he was on the faint light available was being blocked by the heavy citrus colored curtains. Meanwhile, Kelly had walked over to the sliders and was trying to see in from that angle. Randy heard some scuffling noises and a loud bang from inside the house directly under the window. He heard Kelly snort then saw her hop back a step. She saw him looking and waved him over.
Randy stared down at the mess of a Zombie Kelly was pointing at. It looked like a really fat old person with a bad case of chickenpox had gotten all the fat sucked out of them then been rolled in something that made them break out in massive boils that were bursting and seeping fluid constantly. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman lying on the floor trying to get it’s flaccid arms to knock on the door. The face was tilted up in their direction, but you couldn’t make out the eyes there were so many boils surrounding it. The mouth was gnashing up and down like a demonic goldfish, and those weird growling noises were periodically echoing out of it.
The thing apparently couldn’t stand up so was just kind of crawling around on the floor. Randy wondered how long it’d been laying in the house before they’d woken it from stasis by banging away on the window. He looked behind it to make sure he didn’t see any other mystery guests crawling around inside the home. Not seeing any he told Kelly to stay there and keep the things attention. He went back over to the window and gingerly reached through the broken section to unlock it. Once he had it unlocked, he slowly opened it while Kelly thumped her foot into the glass in front of the oozing crawler to keep its attention.
Randy stepped through the window and down to the floor with one foot. He raised his other foot and lifted it through the window to get inside the house. The foot he’d already put inside slipped on the goo trail from the crawler. He fell backwards cracking his head on an end table. His machete went flying in the air when he fell. He was dazed for a second then when he looked up the damned crawler was almost on top of him.
He kicked his feet backwards to get away from the thing and tried to jump back up. Kelly was at the window looking in. As soon as she saw the situation, she stuck her hatchet through the window for Randy to use. Randy saw the hatchet and reached for it as the crawler surged forward teeth first and latched onto his boot. Completely panicked Randy kicked down as hard as he could shattering the bottom of the crawlers jaw. He ran away from the crawler into the kitchen. The crawler was moving faster than it had any right to be able to move. In the dark kitchen Randy turned and ran for the front door. The crawler stayed right on his tail.
He realized at the last second if he opened the front door the crawler would be outside with his kids. Instead of running out the door he turned sharply to the left and ran up the stairs. The crawler stopped at the bottom making high pitched mewling noises. Randy stared down at the thing now that he had the ability to really look at it. The virus had really messed this one up. It was wearing what had once been a bathrobe but was now fabric fused into parts of its skin. Loose folds of greyish skin hung loosely off the skeleton of the creature. There didn’t appear to be any muscle mass in the legs whatsoever. The face might as well have been the face of something from another planet.
Randy looked down at his belt and verified he still had a hammer shoved in one of the loops. He pulled it out and started walking down the stairs. The crawler must’ve sensed him coming as it got more and more agitated the closer that he got until it seemed to be almost levitating with energy it wanted to get at him so badly. The squealing noise it was emitting was getting higher and higher. It looked like a deflated cocoon blowing in the wind. Randy almost put his hammer away and pulled out his pistol instead. He knew they still had a lot of work to do there though so instead he knelt down on one knee and slammed the hammer into the crawlers head.
The result was as disgusting as he’d anticipated. It took three more hits before the thing finally died. His arm was coated in a thick, stringy substance by the time he was done. The smell was indescribable. He walked back towards where Kelly was staring in his direction from the window. He got close enough to see her and see the relief in her eyes that he was alive. Without thinking about it he stuck his hand out to help her in the window. She took one look at his hand and told him she’d meet him outside the garage. Before he could argue she was gone. His wife was brave, but she didn’t do gross or stinky purposefully unless a baby diaper was involved.
He walked into the kitchen and squirted dish detergent all over his arm. He used the soap to get as much of the nastiness off his skin and clothes as he could then wiped himself down with napkins. He stood in the kitchen for a second trying to remember what the hell he’d broken into the house for in the first place. He finally remembered he was just trying to get in the garage. Giving the dead crawler a wide berth, he worked his way around the bottom floor of the home until he found the door that let him into the garage.
He knocked on it lightly a few times but didn’t hear anything on the other side. He opened the door and stepped in next to the car Myriah had seen through the window. Squeezing between the car and the cluttered workbench he maneuvered around to the center of the garage. He was excited to see what was underneath those tarps. The shapes looked right. A tapping on the garage window freaked him out until he looked up and saw it was just a grinning Myriah being held up in the air by someone once again. Putting off moving the tarp for a second he reached behind him and pulled the red cord securing the garage door
As soon as he pulled the cord the garage door popped up a couple of feet. Kelly and the others immediately entered the garage and began poking around. Randy pulled the tarp off and threw it on top of the car. Underneath the tarp were two ruggedized and expensive looking camouflage colored four wheelers. On the other side of the ATVs was a pile of camping and hunting gear. The only thing missing were the actual weapons. Randy sighed at that knowing he’d need to go back inside and see if he could find any hunting rifles. He knew that there were bound to be some stashed away somewhere in the home. He was kind of surprised they hadn’t been proudly displayed in the living room in true redneck fashion.
The workbench had a pair of loppers mixed in with a bunch of other random tools. Caitlyn held those up earning her a silent golf clap from the rest of the family. Randy was feeling a lot more optimistic about their chance of making it out of Georgia now. They just needed to check the house for weapons and any other supplies then bust the shed open to get the gas containers and that wagon Myriah had seen. Once they had all that they could hit the trails and four wheel their way right on the hell out of Brotherhood country. It may suck everywhere else too, but they could worry about that when they got there.
Chapter 24: Tightening the Noose
The clearer team leader met up with Krantz on the side of the highway by the first onramp. His name was Bruce. In the old world he’d been a telemarketer trying to get people to sign up for carpet cleaning services. After work he spent most of his time working out and surfing dating sites trying to pick up women. He listed his profession as structural architecture and had even read through a couple of wikis on what that meant so he could live the lie. Unless of course he picked up a girl who wanted to actually see him spend some real money. If that happened his backup plan was normally a forgotten wallet and an invite back to his place to help look for it. So basically, the guy was a slime ball.
&nb
sp; The apocalypse had been good for him. He’d survived his time as a looter and due to his impressive physical appearance been quickly promoted to the clearing teams. He found that he liked the work. He didn’t enjoy the constant terror of sitting in the truck with the Zombies trying to work their way in, but he liked killing. He’d actually fantasized about killing some of the women he’d picked up on dates back before this ever happened. If they’d fallen for the wallet back at his place trick and then irritated him in the slightest, he might have given in to his urges. The Zombie apocalypse had given him the freedom to blast human beings apart as part of his nine to five.
He’d risen up to be team leader rather slowly. He didn’t understand why it’d taken so long since he was so passionate about his job. That passion was why his supervisors were all a little freaked out by him. Nobody should wake up in the morning excited about hopping on a machine gun and shooting the shit out of a bunch of infected human beings. Regardless of their opinions they never could pinpoint a specific reason not to promote him, so he’d eventually gotten the nod and been moved to the team leader position. The Ball Ground clearing was supposed to be one of the last jobs he was in charge of before being pulled up into the regular army. He was a little worried he might not have the freedom to exercise his passion so thoroughly once promoted.
Zombies! (Book 5): Greater Love Hath No Man Page 21