by mike Evans
Shaun had met people who’d been new to the base at the time, and they had been too scared to speak. They were used to the dead being everywhere. The last thing they’d wanted to do was let the dead know they were close.
Shaun said, “They’re gone, sir, it’s okay to speak.
“Who the fuck are you?” the dad yelled.
“Nobody important, just passing through.”
“Just passing through? You’re full of shit. You’re a fucking angel. We’ve been held up here, moving back and forth between buildings. We’ve had to try fifty different things to trick these stupid things to move so we could pass to another building. You get one of them to see you, or if they think they saw something, and they decimate a building.”
“The Turned—that’s what we call them. Seems everyone has a name for them though.”
“I don’t care what you call them, they’re dead now. Where are you going? Or did you make it there? We’ve had a lot of people pass through, trying to find a place to stay. That’s where most of our supplies have come from, honestly.”
Shaun put his hand on his pistol, and the dad immediately understood that what he had said was said the wrong way. “Wait, wait, I said that wrong! Can we please start over? My name’s Marshall, this is my son Benjamin.”
Benjamin brushed the red hair out of his eyes again and said, “You can call me Ben; I hate Benjamin. Everyone gave me shit in school for that stupid name.”
“That stupid name was your great grandpa’s name, Benjamin Arnold Mathers,” replied the father. “You can call me Marshall, son. Anyone that saved our asses doesn’t need to be formal.”
Ben smiled expectantly, rolling his fingers towards Shaun. “My name’s Shaun Fox. No, this wasn’t where I was coming. What were you talking about, about your supplies?”
“People come here thinking there wouldn’t be any dead. We are out in the middle of nowhere. No one really gave any credit, it would seem, to how far these things can travel, or how far the spread was when it happened. I don’t think people know too much about them, like I said we’ve been here a year since day one of these things. Benjamin—or Ben, excuse me—was here doing inventory for me on a Sunday; it started in the evening. They aren’t real big on people working on Sundays here, so that was always inventory day. I’d had a broken foot at the time, long since healed, thank god, because my doctor went running down the street the day it happened, chasing his nurse.”
“They were trying to escape together on foot?” Shaun asked.
“Nope, he was chasing her, trying to eat her. He caught her, too. Was a real good lesson in what those things could do. He was in his sixties and looked like he’d have given someone in the Olympics a run for their money,” Ben said.
“You had enough supplies in your store to last the last year?”
“We didn’t worry too much about expiration dates after the first three months, Shaun. We huddled in the winter to keep from freezing to death. We couldn’t light a fire in here, and we didn’t have heat by wintertime. The lights had begun flickering in the summer, and by fall, they were gone. We had been keeping eyes out for people on the internet but it died. We wish we knew how to kill these things more effectively. We don’t have any heavy weaponry, like the one you do; just our brains and some knives. We don’t dare take these on barehanded.”
“Probably smart, Marshall. You need blood. That will keep them focused on something while you move. You just have to be absolutely clean when you do it. Nothing in the way of scents; that’s going to get their attention. You also have to be quiet.”
“What do you mean you have to have blood?” Ben asked.
Shaun reached into his Humvee, pulling out one of the few bags he had left. “When I was in the big city, we would take a blood bag and hang it from a light post. Anywhere that you could loop a rope over it, with just the smallest puncture in the bag.”
“What the hell for? I mean what are you going to get out of that?”
“They go for the blood, even when you are shooting them in the head, they still stay there; they don’t run away. They are so thirsty for the blood that they stay through hell. I dropped more than you’ve probably ever seen doing it that way.”
Ben looked at the clothes the boy was wearing and knew that that was not normal attire for what he figured was a seventeen-year-old at best. “Where have you been before this, if you weren’t coming here to stay, can I ask you what you were doing? Where you are going?” Ben asked.
“I'm headed east. I want to help people, maybe show them the ropes of how to kill these things. It was time I moved on. There wasn’t anything that the people I’d been with the last year can’t do without me. The government said there wasn’t any hope but I won’t lie, I keep praying to meet someone that has an idea that will work. Something besides shooting them; it’s going to take forever to do that. I fear we’ll run out of bullets before we run out of the dead.”
Ben motioned to the other stores. Marshall nodded, and he walked quickly, knocking on the front of a dozen different doors. Within ten minutes, Shaun had twenty people standing around him. “You’ve all been cramped inside of these stores for a year?”
An older man that should have given up on keeping a head of hair stepped forward nervously, trying to rearrange the handful of hairs that were still on his head. “We didn’t have much choice, son. Those things waited for us in the corn, the one time that we tried to leave; it was a trap. We had twice this when we first started looking for ways to leave. We thought we could travel through the corn at first. The first group that went out came back bloodied and as one of the dead. We tried a few other ideas, and they all turned out to be shit. We decided we’d stay here until the government came.”
“The government isn’t going to come, sir. I don’t think they are still active. If they are, then there’s a damn good chance that they aren’t stepping foot on the soil,” Shaun said.
“What do you mean? You can call me Bill, my dad was sir, at least when he was alive.”
“I mean that I think there’s still the slightest hope there are navy boats still out there, with souls aboard. Every movie I’ve ever seen about those things makes them out to look like they are floating cities. If they had what they needed to sustain, there could be a floating city out there filled with military.”
Bill said, “Wait, so you are travelling, looking for a place to take refuge? You think that they would actually let someone who could be infected come on board?”
“I'm not looking for the places that are safe. I'm looking for places like this with people—maybe like yourself—who, to put it bluntly, don’t have the first clue what to do with the dead. You don’t trick them; you don’t play games with them. You give them bait, and when the time is right, you blow their heads off. If you can’t be smarter than them, then you are going to be just like them, eventually. They aren’t something you want to play with. You rinse and repeat. The only time the traps don’t work is when one of the alphas is around.”
Almost everyone stepped forward. Marshall asked, “So, I'm sorry, ‘alpha’? Like a leader of their team?”
“More like a pack, at least that’s what they look like to me. I’ve seen them tell the others not to do something, and with no question, they did exactly as told. They’ve torn the others apart without thinking anytime that they didn’t listen.”
Marshall rubbed his hands on his face, trying to take all this in. “How in the hell do you know so much? Where did you get the gear? I know your name is Shaun Fox, we went over that, but who the fuck are you, kid?”
“I’m just a traveler. If you have the chance to arm yourselves, you do it. I don’t know this town from any other, but I’m sure someone here has got weapons. If you see one of the dead that looks like they are always out front, always in charge, then you put a bullet in them. They’ll be less organized. I think if all the alphas are removed that it would help. We never know, but everything is worth a shot. Die or fight, that’s better than hiding. Be
tter than waiting for others.”
“We’ve got some guns, I’m sure that we do. There might be more of these things in town, though. How do you kill them without guns?”
“I don’t know, you could use a bow. You can use a truck, or a tank. Get in; we’ll go drive around. Unless you’ve got a car anywhere that you think would still run?”
“I don’t think that dad’s old pickup would do very good. It’s been in the back alley for a year,” Ben said.
Marshall looked to Bill. “You believe this shit? The dead—in one day, in one hour—got rid of everyone. We wasted an entire year, and this kid rolls in and changes everything.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I almost drove right past. Your town looked dead, and I’m trying not to waste ammunition on towns that don’t look like they have any hope. I saw the boarded-up windows and figured there was a chance that you guys had a few people still alive.”
“How did you think of starting the crops on fire?”
“I didn’t really put a lot of thought into it, to tell you the truth. I put the truck in drive instead of reverse and punched the gas. I haven’t been driving in over a year; I’m still figuring things out. I had one of the dead coming through my truck, and it was either leave, or have them come in. I didn’t want them in the truck. I set it on fire because I hoped they’d follow me.”
Bill was looking over Shaun and his gear and said, “You look like you might have done some cherry picking on an army base. I know exactly where Camp Dodge is. You got a truck that says it’s from there. You dress like a soldier, and you sure as hell don’t look like your face has ever seen a razor before.”
“I was staying there. If you guys go there, if you can make the trip without getting yourselves killed, then you might be able to seek refuge or get supplies.”
“You think they’ll just happily turn over a shit ton of weapons and let us walk on out with them? I’d think that there’s kind of a small chance people would do that,” Bill said.
“If you tell them who you spoke to and who sent you, they would give you supplies; maybe some food, and even a truck to take back. Otherwise, stay here, be safe. You’ll have to figure out how to eat something besides out-of-date food though. You guys have plenty of farm land around here, but that’ll take patience.”
“What are you suggesting then?” Bill asked.
“Nothing really, but if you want to go get gear, something more than shotguns and rifles made for hunting, then go to Des Moines and pick it up. Tell them Shaun Fox told you about it. Tell them you don’t know where I was going, that I am safe, and not to come after me.”
The three took a few steps back. “It isn’t anything bad, I just don’t want to worry about anyone but myself for a while, not to sound selfish. I just think people do better that way sometimes. We’ve lost a lot of people getting to the point that we learned how to kill them. I mean, we learned how to kill them on day one. I’m going to keep moving, though, after I get your group settled—or at least until you can get a gun in your hands.”
“We can live with that,” Bill said for the group.
The three climbed into the side and back of Shaun’s truck. They gasped when they saw the amount of ammunition cans that he had in the truck. As well as the rifles in the back.
“Not to sound ungrateful, Shaun, but is there any reason that you need all this shit that you have?” Marshall asked.
Shaun had his hand on his pistol, and Marshall more than understood that it was a question that probably shouldn’t have been asked. “You asked if there’s a way to kill these things without a gun. Well, if there is and it is easy, then I don’t know it. I need these guns. I’m working my way across the United States, and I’m going to show as many people as I can how to kill them. We were going to launch it on the web, but doesn’t look like it’ll do a lot of good if all these small towns are out of power.”
“If you took someone with you, can I ask that you might teach them how to use the guns? How to survive?” Marshall inquired.
“You must not have heard me when I said that I didn’t want to worry about losing people. People don’t seem to do too good around me. It isn’t me being a coward, it’s being safe. Safe for others, I promise. If you clean out the dead from this town, unless you go to load up on guns for more fighting power, you’d be a fool to leave a town that could be a sanctuary.”
“I served before I opened up a shop. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with volunteering to help. I know you’re a teenager, so you know everything, and I’ll say I know you know more than I do about the dead, more than any of us know about the dead. But what I was going to say is: you need to sleep; you need to close your eyes, I’m sure, once in a while. One thing I learned early in my enlistment is that there isn’t anything bad about having someone to watch your back. It’s about the best thing that you can have once you are in the shit,” Marshall said.
“I don’t want you coming with me, Marshall. There’s no offense intended by it, but I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’m going to be doing. I don’t need to worry about anyone, I mean it. And if I meet someone who already knows what they are doing, that is one thing. But you guys don’t know shit about the dead, and I’m not willing to trade your group’s lives to let a few of you learn enough.”
“Well, I don’t know that I’m necessarily presenting you with a choice, kid. You might need some help one day, and you won’t have the chance to ask for it if you never take anyone up on their offers.”
“Well, you’re the first one to offer it, so maybe there will be more of them coming. I’m not saying I never want help; I just don’t see taking you away from these people as a good thing.”
“There are plenty of able people here, they aren’t useless,” Bill chimed in.
“What about Ben? Did you want to take him on an interstate death ride? Do you think that is what’s best for him, Marshall?”
“I think that these youths, just like you, are going to live longer than any of us. I mean if the world goes like it should, we are all going to be dead, and the world is going to be left to all of you. If he knows how to survive and how to kill, then maybe he’ll live long enough to make it through this. Maybe by the time the two of you are my age, or, god forbid, it be his ag-”
“Now wait just one damn minute, I’m not that damn-” Bill interrupted.
Shaun hit his brakes, sliding to a stop. The smell of rubber was dominant in the air. Marshall put his hands up on the dash to make sure he didn’t go through the window. Shaun took his rifle, sliding out. Five of The Turned were running straight for them. Shaun rested the rifle on the door, firing off five shots and sending five of them to the ground. Shaun motioned for them to follow him. The three looked at each other, unsure how they felt about it, but got out, walking slowly behind Shaun. “Can I ask what we are doing, Shaun?” Ben asked.
“What am I doing? I thought that you wanted an education? Well, here you guys go. Now, you take a good look at them.”
“You killed them,” Bill said excitedly.
“I didn’t kill them. Well, I didn’t kill all of them.”
“You missed?” Marshall asked, disappointed.
“Sorry, I thought you wanted to learn something, right? Well, here’s your education. And you best pay attention, because I’m not sticking around. I wasn’t looking for a new place to live. I was looking for a new group to show how to survive. I’m going to rinse and repeat the rest of the way across America. If you want to learn, this is pretty good to know.”
The dead were trying to get up, but were unable to quickly. The Turned who was closest to them had a shot through his kneecap. Shaun pointed. “They heal. You give this thing a day or two, and he’ll be back to his normal self—as normal as the dead could be.”
“These things can heal?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, and they do it pretty quick. The important thing, the best thing to know, is that just because they don’t get shot in the head, doesn’t mean
it won’t slow them down. When we haven’t been worried about the noise, we’ve unleashed drums of ammo on the dead. We didn’t leave them there in the street, because you can’t leave the dead alone to die. The only thing that we’ve found is that, like this one, if you shoot them in the knee, then it buys you the time to get away. Or in your case, if you are wanting to clean up the streets of this town, you can get pretty close and make sure that you have got a clear and safe shot to take them out with. It’s damn better than anything else.”
Shaun leveled his rifle, squeezing one perfectly aimed shot off. The Turned’s head snapped back, and it stumbled backwards, falling over the one Shaun had intentionally shot in the skull the first time.
“Now that one is dead.” The other three were screaming at Shaun, ready to tear his skin from his bones.
“Do those things actually get mad?” Ben questioned.
“I don’t know if they get mad so much as they aren’t a big fan of not being the highest thing on the food chain. That, or it might be that they don’t like their food eating them. Imagine how pissed you’d be if a pizza shot your friend in the head. Probably wouldn’t leave you too happy, right? I just pray that they aren’t as smart as we are giving them credit for, and that they are just going off some sort of instinct left over from when they were human. Whatever sick design made these things should burn in hell.”