“Hang on.” Charlie rummaged a bit in his pack before handing me a knife. It was a big blade, with Micarta handles. The blade was over seven inches long and was elegant in a simple, drop point way. On the blade near the grip was etched SPARTAN Blades - X Harsey LE Mod 1. I had no idea what that meant, I only knew it felt like it was a very good knife.
“Charlie, it was a lucky shot on my best day,” I said, handing the knife back to him.
“You sure?” Charlie asked. “It’s yours, you won the bet.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Thank God!” Charlie exclaimed as he put the knife away. “I love that knife. Can’t bear to use it, but I love having it.”
I just shook my head. “You’re so freaking weird.”
“I’ll keep my eye out for another one. I owe you a knife,” Charlie said.
“A best knife,” I corrected.
“Yes. A best knife.”
We drove west following the road up towards Montana. Darnell’s directions were more specific once we reached his former campground, but we had to get there first. 310 took us past the town of Lovell, but there was nothing much to see there. The road took us through the center of town, but it looked like everyone had left for parts unknown.
“Probably went to the mountains when everything went south,” Charlie said.
“You think?” I asked.
“These people are second and third generation pioneers. They’ve been raised to be self-reliant and take care of their own, asking nothing of nobody. They would know when a situation was bad and get the hell out,” Charlie explained. “They wouldn’t be as stupid as most city dwellers.”
“You actually just said ‘city dwellers’?” I said.
Charlie grinned. “I’m a Missouri boy, remember? I’d bet we’d find quite a few communities up in the mountains.”
“Yeah. Been thinking about that,” I said.
“Talk to me,” Charlie said, as he navigated his way around a power line that had fallen sometime in the past.
“The west coast had some of the biggest cities. And likely the hardest hit. I was thinking about closing the mountain passes,” I said.
“What about any survivors on the other side of that gate?” Charlie asked.
“I figured we’d rig it so anyone alive could get through, but no one who was dead,” I said.
Charlie thought about that one. “I might have a few ideas about that. And we could use the earth movers we already have or maybe one of those really big ones from a quarry or something.”
“Good idea. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” I said.
We pulled out of Lovell and headed west, eventually swinging north. Wyoming was a fooler of a state. One would think it was all mountains, but there was a lot of flat land out there.
The roads were pretty good even though there was a decent bit of snow still on the ground. I had read once that Wyoming and Colorado didn’t get as much snow as the middle states did, keeping it mostly in the high country. Whoever wrote that obviously never drove out here. We were in snow that stayed at least a foot deep, higher in drifts out on the prairie, yet clear around certain rocky areas.
Up ahead was the town of Cowley; at least that was what the map told me. As we moved closer to the town proper, Charlie slowed the truck down. We stopped completely outside a large building that I knew could only be a school.
“What’s up?” I asked, looking around for trouble.
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. But every instinct I have is telling me we need to drive through here as fast as we can. “
I hated it when Charlie had one of his instinctual episodes. Not because he usually was very dramatic about them, but because he was nearly always right.
“Is it that school there?” I asked.
“Not sure. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, that cleared it up for me,” I said. “Why don’t we try driving through and see what we can see?”
“Fair enough,” Charlie said, moving the truck forward again.
We turned down the first street we came to. It was 4th Street, and it was clear nothing was alive on this street. The houses were the usual low-roof variety, but instead of open spaces between the homes, they had cattle and horse pens. So much for the traditional dog run.
Charlie turned up a block and headed back down 3rd Street. The view didn’t change, and I was starting to wonder about Charlie’s instincts.
“There. Look at the snow between the houses.” Charlie said.
I looked and saw what appeared to be footprints going from one house to the next. The snow was pushed through, not stepped over, and I could see streaks in the snow, likely blood.
“Gotcha. How long?” I asked.
“Can’t tell. But obviously after the last snowfall which was what, two days ago?” Charlie said.
“About there. What are you thinking?” I said, already knowing the answer.
“We need to go hunting. Either now or later,” Charlie said.
“Never put off today—” I started.
“The zombie you’ll need to kill tomorrow,” Charlie said.
“Find an open spot to park, and let’s gear up. How bad could it be? It’s winter,” I said.
Charlie reached over and showed me the scar on his hand. “That bad.”
“You’ll bring that up every time for how long? Just want to know,” I asked.
“At least a year, if we live that long,” Charlie said.
“You’re too ugly to live forever,” I said. “But at least I have a deadline, now.”
Charlie drove slowly through the town following 3rd Street. We kept an eye on the snow, and the trail led from one house to the other. We nearly reached the end of the street when Charlie brought the truck to a stop.
“They stopped here,” he said quietly.
“Let’s gear up,” I said. We got out of the truck on my side which was the furthest from the house. I opened the back door and pulled out my pack, Charlie’s pack, his tomahawk harness, and my pickaxe. We pulled out our rifles and then changed our minds. I did grab two extra magazines for both our Glocks, bringing my total on me to five, and Charlie to six. Between the two of us, we had one hundred and seventy rounds of 9mm goodness to distribute should the need arise. If I ever came across a 9mm carbine that took Glock mags, I might actually cry. Nothing fancy; I’d even take maybe an old MP5 or something.
I pulled out my pick and hefted it, the weight barely noticeable these days. For a moment, I wondered how many ghouls I had dispatched with this pick, and realized that was a number I’d rather not think about. I checked my pistol, my knife, and my mags. I adjusted a strap on my pack, and I was ready to go. Charlie needed a hand with his pack but then he was ready to go, too.
We moved through the snow towards the house. I had the unhealthy job of opening the front door. The house was small, painted white at some point, and had a long-sloping roof. An empty swing squeaked softly on the porch as we approached.
Charlie pointed to the door, and I saw what he was looking at. The porch had been cleared of snow, and there were several footprints around the door and the window. Clearly someone had lived here and had been approached by the horde.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping back to give myself room to kill whatever was going to come out. I waited for a minute and then signaled Charlie I was going in. He nodded and stepped up to come in right behind me.
I went through the door and moved to the left keeping my pick out in front of me. Charlie was right behind me, turning to the right, his ‘hawks held at the ready. The room was small but tidy with flowered furniture and antique-looking tables. I looked at the floor and saw a lot of water and footprints leading to the kitchen.
I nodded at Charlie who saw what I was looking at and he moved in that direction. I kept a watch on the hallway that led to the back rooms and bedrooms.
“John. In here.”
Charlie kept his voice to a whisper, but in that qu
iet place it was like he had shouted.
I stepped around the corner and bumped into Charlie. Over his shoulder, I saw why he had called me in. The kitchen was small with a green counter running along one wall, bisected by an electric stove. A fridge was on the other wall, and a sink looked out the back window into the backyard. The center of the kitchen had a small round table and four wooden chairs. At least, it would have looked like that except for the two corpses and the unbelievable amount of blood on the walls, counter, and floors. A woman was draped over the sink, her hands still grasping the outside of the window she tried to escape through. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, and I could see deep claw marks in her back. Huge bite marks on her shoulders, neck, and back showed how she died, and the sink was full of her blood. One of her legs had enough flesh torn away that I could see at least six inches of her femur.
On the floor by her swinging feet was a man, his face a frozen mask of fury. His arms were covered in bites, and his neck had been ripped open as well. His gut was torn open, and parts of his organs were here and there, adding to the gore. The back door was open, and I could see footprints leading off towards a house on the other side of the lawn.
“Charlie?” I whispered.
“What?”
“Why haven’t they turned?” I asked. Their heads looked okay; no trauma there. There was enough damage to maybe keep them from crawling, but not enough to keep them from turning.
“That is a good question,” Charlie said. He began to examine the man on the floor while I went over to the woman. I looked her over carefully, and aside from the awful wounds, she should be trying to eat my face off right now. I looked at her arms and saw a curious set of markings. When I looked closer, I began to realize why she hadn’t turned.
“Charlie, I think this woman was immune like you. That’s why she didn’t turn after she died,” I said.
Charlie nodded. “I think this guy was the same. Do you think they were married?”
I shook my head. “Too coincidental. I’d say more like brother and sister. Same blood type, shared genes, and all that stuff I don’t fully understand.”
“Well, now we need to keep going,” Charlie said. He stepped around the huge pool of blood and out the rear door.
We followed the trail through the snow, and I kept an eye out for any tracks that led away from the group. I wasn’t in the mood to be jumped by any strays that had left the group. The footprints went across the backyard and made their way to the house directly across from the one with the two dead people. The rear door was still slightly open, which did fill me with a lot of confidence that the owners were still alive.
Charlie went up to the door and started to push it open. I looked over at the side of the house and swept up my pick. A teenage zombie was coming around the house, and he saw me the same time I saw him. He immediately stretched out his arms to try and grab me when I brought he pointed end of the pick down onto the top of his head. The crack of the metal piercing bone was loud in the snow-covered stillness. A small flock of sparrows flew up off the roof of the house next door, and a small bit of snow fell off the roof of the house we were at, landing on the back of Charlie’s neck.
“Really?” Charlie aimed the question at the sky. “Really?”
“Just get through the damn door,” I said, trying not to laugh.
Charlie slammed the door open, and he went to his usual right as I went to my usual left. The kitchen was empty, but at a glance it had been occupied recently. There was a coffee pot on the stove that looked like it had been made earlier that day, and the bread on the counter wasn’t moldy and nasty.
I held up a hand, and Charlie paused. I pointed to the other room, and we both went in looking for trouble. This room was empty as well, but the furniture was all over the place. I watched as Charlie followed the blood trails to the back bedrooms, but he shook his head as he came back.
“The blood is leading away from the bedrooms, not toward them,” he said. “No one is back there.”
“Guess they weren’t immune,” I said.
“Not this time,” Charlie said.
“Tracks are outside the front door,” I said.
“Here we go again,” Charlie said. “You do realize they are getting larger as a group while we have no reinforcements?”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true. But we had nothing else to do today, did we?”
“There is that.”
We went out the front door, and I was trying to put a timeline in my head. There was no way these attacks were just random zombies wandering around. Something had to attract the horde to each house individually.
We went outside the front and checked the trail. The footprints were bloodier this time, and there seemed to be more of them.
The tracks led across the street and over to another house. This one was a two-story home with a brick first floor. Charlie stepped suddenly, and I stepped wide to give him room.
“Looks like they didn’t get in right away,” Charlie said, pointing to the tracks in the snow around the house. The snow was trampled flat around the house, and it looked like handprints were streaked across the windows. The door looked like it had been hit with something ugly, but then I realized it was just zombie splatter. Zombie hands tended to break apart when they were smashed against something unyielding like a steel door.
“All right, I’ll go this way and you go that way; we’ll meet where the tracks leave off,” I said.
“Fair enough. Watch yourself,” Charlie said.
“You, too.” I went around the west side of the building, walking wide to clear the corner. I was glad I did since there was another zombie walking towards me. It was a man about my age, or at least it used to be a man, with a large beard and a shock of wild hair. His eyes were glassy, and his mouth was open revealing a number of blood-soaked teeth.
I cocked my pick back, ready to take him out when suddenly he tripped on something under the snow. I wasn’t about to let a freebie go like that, so I slammed my weapon down onto the back of his head as he struggled to get out of the snow.
I ran my pick through the snow to clean it off a little, and stepped around the house to the front yard. Two more zombies were there moving towards the other side of the house, and they hadn’t seen me yet. I stepped quickly towards the pair, striking down the one on the left, and then using a backswing to take down the other as it turned towards me. I looked around for any other enemies, but the yard was clear. I looked at the house, and didn’t see any signs that they had broken in. The trail led off to the other side of the street, in between two houses, and I knew that was where we had to go.
I waited for a minute, and then Charlie appeared. He was walking normally, and his ‘hawks didn’t look like they had seen any action. He stopped and looked at the two corpses.
“Just two?” he asked.
“Third one’s around the corner. Real wooly dude, too,” I said.
“Nothing on my side,” Charlie said. “Any sign of entry on your side?”
“Nope. Looks like we might be closing in, though. These guys seem like they just haven’t caught up with the main group,” I said. “They went that way in case you were wondering.”
“Well, three down is three we don’t have to face later,” Charlie said.
“Always good to play the odds,” I said.
We walked across the yard, following the tracks. They crossed the street and went in between the houses on the other side. The houses were pretty run down with shingles coming off the roofs, and parts of the siding were sagging and coming off. One of the houses had some bushes around the front windows, but they were reaching to the roof line, and obviously hadn’t been cut in years. As we passed by, I looked in one window and saw the home was a mess inside. I began to think the homes were not messy as a result of the Upheaval; they had always been that way.
Charlie led the way, and when we reached the backyard he suddenly swung left and right, killing two zombies that were on the move from the middle of
the yard. Behind them, feasting on something, was a crowd of about fifteen Z’s.
They were huddled around some kind of prey on the ground, and the snow was bright with fresh blood. Some of the zombies would raise their heads to slurp down a particularly delectable morsel, and their faces were covered in blood. It was like watching a pack of wolves eat an elk.
One of the zombies looked at me when it raised its head and stood up suddenly. Its groan attracted the attention of the rest of the pack, and as one they rose to their feet to start the slow walk over to us.
They weren’t moving too fast, but they were moving quickly enough to be a problem if we got delayed for any reason. I put my pick down in the snow with the handle sticking up, drawing my Glock as I did so.
Charlie followed suit, and stepped over a few paces to make sure his line of fire had nothing behind it. One time, Tommy shot a zombie and the bullet knocked off the valve that connected a hose to a propane tank. That sucker is probably halfway to Jupiter by now.
I didn’t waste any time. I just lined up my first shot and killed the damn zombie. Some people liked to hit them in the forehead, but that was actually a chancy thing. Depending on the angle of the hit, the bullet had a decent chance of bouncing off the skull. Me, I liked to shoot for the center of the face, particularly the eyes. That almost never failed to bring them down permanently.
Fifteen shots between the two of us, and the threat was finished. I looked over at what the zombies were feeding on, and my heart sank. It was a man, not a beast, and he had been eaten from the back. His ribs were showing, and I could see where great handfuls of lung tissue and organ tissue had been torn apart. His legs were drawn up, and his arms were tucked by his sides, both of which showed huge bite marks and tears in the flesh.
I shook my head and started to turn away when I heard an odd sound. I looked over at Charlie, but he was too busy reloading his magazine to have noticed anything. I looked around, trying to zero in on the source of the sound, but I didn’t hear it again. I turned back to Charlie and was about to open my mouth when I heard it again. It sounded like a small cough or like someone trying to get some air.
White Flag of the Dead (Book 9): The Zombie Wars (We All Fall Down) Page 4