Chapter 31: Overdose
The van smelled like gasoline. It actually wasn’t a bad odor considering the number of people crammed in the van. There’d been plenty of times Kyler would’ve been happy to inhale some gasoline fumes rather than be subjected to the fumes coming off Rodriguez. Randy had spotted a go-kart track and told Kyler to stop. Not really knowing why they were pulling over at the overgrown tourist trap Kyler had listen while Randy told him they could probably find all kinds of tools and gas there. It turned out Randy had spent a summer working at a place like this so had a pretty good idea of what may be available.
He’d been correct about the gas and tools. The place had also been completely Zombie free which was a nice bonus. Looking at the map Kyler could see they were coming up on a massive lake, so he felt good about having the extra gas. He was assuming the closer they got to the lake the more homes and businesses there’d be. The more homes and businesses there were the more chances of Zombie packs or survivors who may want to take shots at them. They’d be forced to cross over some bridges as well. Kyler figured if there was anywhere that they may run into the Brotherhood having people man posts it’d be on the bridges.
Rodriguez had decided to rejoin them after they finished looting the go kart place. He’d let Kelly take a look at this shoulder. She was sitting in the first row now working with Myriah on patching up the holes that Caitlyn had put in Rodriguez. Rodriguez being Rodriguez he’d already managed to bring Caitlyn to tears over the whole incident. Kyler could tell Rodriguez was seriously straining Kelly’s bedside manner as well with this crude and cruel comments. Honestly Kyler didn’t know what’d gotten into the man he considered a friend.
They figured out what’d gotten into Rodriguez when he suddenly projectile vomited before falling over backwards in the seat with his eyes rolling up in his head. Kelly had been digging through her bag looking for more tape when it happened, so she missed most of the initial onslaught. Myriah ended up with a full-on puke facial with the chunky hot mix dripping out of her hair. Kyler caught some of what was happening in the rear-view mirror and just hoped the poor girl hadn’t had her mouth open when it happened.
Myriah turned away from Rodriguez struggling to wipe the hot gunk off her face and out of her hair. Kyler pulled the van over so everyone could figure out what they needed to do. He was also hoping they could do something about the smell in the car. He was longing now to go back to the strong odor of gasoline fumes. Kelly was checking on Rodriguez.
“Hey Kyler. Your buddy here isn’t looking good. I’m thinking he’s been munching on too many painkillers and drinking too much. I’d say we should try and make him puke, but he seems like he’s already taken care of that. I’m not sure what else we can do besides clean him up.” Kelly was using a wad of bandages to try and wipe the puke up off Rodriguez and the seat. Kyler pulled a spare shirt out of his bag and gave it to Myriah to use to clean off her face. He noticed she was sobbing too. It was a weird kind of crying since she didn’t want to open her mouth and risk getting any of the puke in it.
“We need to flip him on his side.” Kyler said trying to figure out how to climb in and help her. There was puke everywhere and it was a pretty confined space. He was saved from having to do it as Randy just dove right on in and started manhandling Rodriguez. Pretty soon he had him laid out on his side across all three seats.
“He’s still breathing. He looks a little blue around the lips though.” Kelly said.
“Oxy overdose.” Kyler said. It was a sign of the times that it had become a common enough occurrence in New England that it’d made its way into the First Aid section of the Boy Scout handbook.
“What do we do?” Randy said.
“We need to get him some of the medicine that counters it. It’s like Narcan or nalexey or something. If we can find a pharmacy, they should have some.” Kyler said trying to remember what the full first aid for this was. As far as he could remember it was to keep the person from drowning in their own vomit and call 911 as soon as possible.
“Ok. Let’s find one then.” Randy said. Inwardly Randy was wondering what kind of person it made him that he was privately hoping Rodriguez didn’t make it. Randy had instantly liked Kyler once they’d gotten rolling together. He trusted Kyler. He felt that Rodriguez would’ve been much happier with turning them in and getting the reward. Rodriguez had made it obvious he didn’t want to be there. It wouldn’t surprise Randy one bit to find out that the overdose wasn’t even accidental.
Everyone got back in the van. They drove in silence craning their necks to find a pharmacy. The heavy stench of vomit mixed with the acrid odor from the gasoline cans hung in the air even with the windows all rolled down. Short of finding a pharmacy and getting the drugs they needed the only thing Kyler could think of for them to do was keep an eye on Rodriguez and hope he didn’t die or sustain any permanent brain damage. It was tearing Kyler up that he may lose Rodriguez. It’d never even occurred to him that maybe the tough soldier exterior was hiding someone just as scared as he was. Pulling him off in this betrayal and forcing him to just accept it may have been too much for him. If Rodriguez died Kyler knew that blood was going to be on his hands. Just like the blood of all the others who’d stood by his side and helped him survive. He may want to warn Randy that the people around him didn’t have very much in the way of life expectancy.
They continued driving without seeing any signs of a pharmacy anywhere. Randy mentioned they should look for police cars or fire stations as well since those would be stocked with the lifesaving drug as well. Almost immediately after bringing up that idea they passed a small fire station. Ironically enough it was burnt to the ground.
“If Rodriguez was conscious that’d crack him up.” Kyler said smiling to hide the fear he was feeling for his comrade in arms. Rodriguez may be a complete pain in the ass, but Kyler still considered him a friend. Kelly smiled and reached up and patted him on the arm.
They kept driving until they came to a bridge going over part of the lake.
“Is that the whole lake?” Caitlyn asked from the back seat. She was making sure each of the little kids spent plenty of time with their heads close to the fresh air coming in from the windows. The Geneva convention wouldn’t allow most enemy combatants to be subjected to the smells inside the van. There was also the very real possibility of the toxic gas fumes being bad enough to knock out the little kids. It wasn’t likely but at this point no on really wanted to risk anything else going wrong. A good rule of thumb was to try to only have to deal with one unconscious person at a time.
“This is just the first little part of it. It gets a lot bigger up ahead.” Randy answered her. Kyler had passed the map along to Randy and made him official navigator for the trip.
“Could we take a boat to South Carolina? That might throw off whoever’s chasing us.” Caitlyn said.
“That might be the ticket. Good thinking.” Randy said before looking over at Kyler. “Hey man. How likely is it do you think your former boss is chasing us and how long do you think we have before he catches us?”
“He probably already knows we took off and I bet he suspects that you’re with us. Assuming he’s figured that out my guess is we have a few hours lead time on him. He has people he’ll send out ahead of him as scouts on motorcycles and fast cars. Those guys could be catching up to us in the next hour or two in theory. We’d have to sit down and do the math to really figure it out. Are any of you any good at the trains leaving the station and passing each other kind of math crap?” Kyler asked.
“Can we take the lake all the way to South Carolina?” Kelly asked after an awkwardly long silence in which no one volunteered to do the word problem to figure out how long they had before the bad guys caught up to them.
“No.” Randy said staring at the map. “It looks like we’d get past Gainesville though which looks like the last big city before we’d make it over the state line.”
“We going to go for it?” Kyler asked slowing down and
eyeing the parking lot they were passing. It had an area on it for boat launches. There was a rusted-out Volkswagen parked half off the lot but other than that no boats or anything. Kelly and Randy exchanged a look. They were both thinking that doing this meant giving up on finding the medicine Rodriguez needed. They both understood Kyler must know that as well.
“If you think they’re coming after us then the sooner we get off the road the safer we are.” Randy answered.
“How’s Rodriguez look?” Kyler asked Kelly.
“Still looking bluish around the mouth but he’s breathing, and his pulse seems ok. I don’t really know what a great pulse is supposed to feel like, but I can find it and it feels strong.” Kelly answered.
Kyler considered their options. He hadn’t said it out loud, but he knew Krantz was smart and crafty. It wouldn’t surprise him if they really only had another fifteen minutes before the first scouts on motorcycles caught up to them. Krantz would’ve split up his men and his scouts to cover the most territory. He would’ve hedged his bets with Kyler going either north or east. He probably had correctly assumed they’d go east first to try and put some distance between them before making the turn north.
Considering all that and knowing their window of time to search for a pharmacy was rapidly being reduced to zero he made his decision. His first priority needed to be to get these kids and their parents over the finish line. If he got the drug Rodriguez needed but failed to keep the family safe, then the whole mission was a failure. His whole attempt to try and justify the sacrifices everyone had made to get him to this point would be in question. Rodriguez was a big boy. He knew taking drugs and washing them down with Jim Bean wasn’t part of a healthy diet. The idea the maybe Rodriguez had taken too many pills on purpose was too depressing for Kyler to consider right then.
The next large road leading into the woods came up on the right and Kyler swerved down it. The road was rough going with large branches lying across the cracked black pavement. The van bounced over the first few with no issue then Kyler managed to get stuck on another one. They got out to look and saw the van was straddling a big log. The tires weren’t touching anything solid on either side. Figuring out that the van was front wheel drive only took a few minutes after which Kyler, Caitlyn and Randy all lay across the hood of the van while Kelly gingerly tapped the accelerator.
No one got ran over and the van got unstuck so they voted that one a win. They continued driving past driveways leading to what looked like some seriously big mansions.
“This must be where all the rich people from Atlanta have their houses.” Randy said staring in awe at a house that must be at least twenty thousand square feet. That was just judging from the pieces they could see of it through the overgrown foliage.
“Agreed. This place is ridiculous.” Kyler said looking out his window to the left at another house coming up that could’ve easily been part of a TV special on unbelievable old money real estate. Even with all that money the people in these homes were just as screwed now as everyone else on the planet. Unless of course they had solar, guns and a ton of ammunition.
“Reminds me of the neighborhood where we ran into Gordon.” Kelly chimed in. All the kids perked up at the mention of the pilot who’d helped them escape from the Brotherhood. If they were expecting a long story though they were disappointed when Kelly didn’t follow up with any additional details. She just sat on the edge of her seat with one hand stroking the hair on Rodriguez’s head while she stared out into the woods on her side of the van.
They got to a point in a few more minutes where there was just too much junk in the road to even think about trying to drive through. Hoping they were far enough down the driveway to be at a house with a dock and a nice boat Kyler backed up twenty feet and turned on to the last driveway they’d passed. It had a gate across the road set about thirty yards into the woods. There was an intercom you could ring if you had a delivery. Kyler assumed that wouldn’t work so just sat idly staring at the gate.
“We have the bolt cutters from the Kart track.” Randy reminded him.
“I don’t see a chain or anything around the gate. I think it’s just one piece that swings open and shut.” Kyler put the van in park so him and Randy could get out and take a look. They found a simple latch they could lever up and pushed the gate open. Excited they hadn’t had to try crashing into the barricade or anything else overly destructive they drove through the now open gate. They continued on up the road towards the large estate set on a stone shelf a little above the lake.
Back at the main road a noise like an upset hornets’ nest could be heard in the distance. The noise finally coalesced into the sound a dirt bike makes. A few minutes after the noise became audible a man in camouflage came zipping along the road dodging debris on a dirt bike. The man’s eyes wide open for any sign of the fugitives he’d been sent out to look for. He slowed down to look at the side road but not seeing anything obvious kept right on going. His job was to get out and past where the fugitives might be. There’d be others behind him who’d do a more thorough job of searching all the side roads. The fugitives wouldn’t stay free for long.
Chapter 32: The Boat House
“Damn that’s a nice house.” Randy said open mouthed gaping at the gorgeous mansion on the side of the lake.
No one was disagreeing with him although Kelly was thinking the word house probably wasn’t the best way to describe the place. The mansion looking monstrosity Randy was currently admiring was at the end of the winding drive. They’d driven past a fenced in pasture easily the size of a football field that looked like it had horse jumping equipment in it. The pasture was so overgrown they could just barely make out the tops of the equipment sticking out of it. A large stable made of the same rock as the huge house sat beside the field. Behind all of that was a large expanse of water with the forests of the lakeshore on the other side peeking back at them.
Kyler drove up and onto the grass then down the slope on the other side of it until he could see the dock that was sticking out into the lake behind the house. The yard was overgrown so he guessed where there may be a road and drove them in that general direction. The dock had a boathouse at the end of it. Kyler was thinking that was a good sign. He was also thinking if this was a bust there should be plenty more docks and boathouses around the area. Rich people spent a lot of time and money keeping up with the Joneses.
Kyler drove through the tall grass right onto the hard clay beach by the dock. Once he got as close to the dock as he could without driving them into the lake he stopped. Before anyone got out, they spent a minute listening to see if they heard any screeches. Kyler was impressed at how easily even the toddler went into silent mode when her parents told her to. That kind of discipline was probably ninety percent of the reason the family had survived.
“I think we’re good.” Kyler said finally after the silence had dragged out for a full minute.
“You and me go check out the boathouse?” Randy asked.
Kyler nodded and the two of them got out of the van. Randy had that weird ax dangling from his hand while Kyler had a machete. Both of them had rifles hanging off them as well as all their other weapons where they could easily get to them. Kyler had a new appreciation for the ax that Randy was carrying. When Randy had told him about the weird house that he’d taken it from Kyler had instantly remembered the fresh-looking corpse in full armor at the bottom of the stairs. Even with all the death he’d seen that one still stood out.
The dock creaked under their feet as they walked towards the large boathouse at the end of it. The boards starting to show the impact of multiple years of neglect. Another few years with a decent storm every year and these docks would all be washed away. There’d just be the large pilings sticking up out of the water to show where a dock had been.
Placing his feet carefully on the wood to avoid falling through and screwing up his ankle Kyler led the way. The large wooden boathouse at the end of the dock looked like it’d seen better days
. All of the paint was flaking off of it in big patches. The storm shutters were a storm or two away from falling off the two large windows they were covering. A tangled mess of ropes and cables drifted in the water where the bottom of the boathouse disappeared into the lake. Kyler looked at the door wondering if they should’ve brought the bolt cutters with them.
The door turned out to be easy to open though. They walked right in. The screeching started as soon as they’d both made it inside. There was a large yacht sitting in the water on the right side of the boathouse. The left side was empty. It was dark inside the enclosed boathouse with the main source of light coming from the door they’d just opened. The screeches seemed to be coming from every direction at once.
“Out! Out! Out!” Randy yelled grabbing Kyler by his shoulder and dragging him backwards through the boathouse door. He almost got it shut before a middle-aged Zombie slammed into it.
Randy and Kyler jumped out of the way as the pus and mold covered Zombie slammed into the hard wood flooring of the dock. The Zombie was extremely skinny. Kyler wondered how long it’d been stuck in that boathouse. It looked like a pretty long time judging by the mold covering half of its body. The other half of the thing’s skin being the normally grotesque reddened and pus-filled bluster covered mess. Randy went down on one knee slamming the ax he was carrying into the Zombies mouth. The things teeth snapped and broke as it spewed blood trying to screech while its hands clawed frantically in the air trying to get at Randy.
Zombies! (Book 5): Greater Love Hath No Man Page 28