Haven (Book 1): Journey

by Switzer, Brian M.

  They moved the bags out of the window and stepped through it into the parking lot. They turned right at the end of the lot, and right again onto Replacement Avenue. After they’d traveled a block and a half on Replacement, their next target came into view. The base exchange was a tall rectangle made of drab-looking brick. It had a large, pitched roof resembled a church steeple. A row of glass panels separated a pair of double doors at the entrance. They couldn’t see any windows.

  “Looks like we’ll be breaking glass again,” Danny said. The thought of how much longer his bait would hold the creepers on the other side of the base concerned him. If the dead were already filtering back, the sound shattering of glass could bring them in droves.

  Two gunshots rang out in rapid succession. Danny froze, staring to the southeast, the direction the gunfire came from. Then he scanned their current position to see if the reports had drawn out any creepers. Five seconds passed, then ten. He decided that was enough standing still, out in the open. “Get to the exchange, double-time,” he said, pointing to the building.

  He worried about the gunfire as they made their way along the avenue. For the millionth time, he cursed because they didn’t have radios or any other way to communicate across short distances. Danny felt sure Will wouldn’t have fired unless he felt he had no other options. The Boss’s team had to be in grave danger for him to take such a big chance.

  They came to a stop under a tattered blue awning that covered the exchange’s entrance. He looked at his team and saw worry on their faces.

  “Do you think Will’s team is in trouble?” Tara asked. She rubbed her forearms and looked at Danny with a pensive expression.

  “He wasn’t firing his gun just for the hell of it,” Jiri answered in a clipped voice.

  “Will can take care of his business,” Danny said, his tone firm. “Let’s not go jumping at shadows.”

  “But we know where they are!” Tara exclaimed. Her eyes flitted from Danny to Jiri and back again. “We can help. We can be there in five minutes.”

  “No.” Danny was forceful. “That’s my best friend and his Dad, who happens to be my boss, over there. No one here cares about them more than me.” He softened his tone of voice and leaned in close to her. “But they have a job to do. So do we. Ours is right here in this building and nowhere else. I’ve been watching Will and Coy kill these things for nine months. There’s no one better. Except for me and Jiri.”

  “You’re damned right,” Jiri interjected. He and Danny bumped knuckles like a couple of pre-outbreak frat boys. Tara rolled her eyes and turned her nose up, but it was for show- she gave them a broad smile and the tension subsided.

  “If they’re in trouble Will can get them out of it,” he said. “And if we show up without scavenging this exchange, he’s going to whip my ass.”

  Tara nodded her head in agreement. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I don’t want to be responsible for you getting your ass whipped.”

  Danny gave her a quick hug. “Try, I should have said. He would try to whip my ass.

  “On to the matter at hand. We’ve got two stories, three if there’s a basement. We’ll start at the bottom and sweep our way to the top floor. Be careful on the stairs. Jiri, you take the rear going up or down whatever stairs we find. Keep your head on a swivel. Ready to swing your ax?”

  “You bet, brother.” Jiri hefted it above his head.

  “Get us in through these doors, then.”

  Will’s group didn’t encounter any creepers while running the guns to the van, but on the way back they almost ran right into a pair of them. Hunched over the remains of a small, unfortunate woodland’s critter, they snarled as they fought over the choicest parts. Will saw them first and stopped. Tara was running beside him; her stop was so sudden that Coy ran into her from the rear. His feet slipped beneath him and he landed on his rear. She stumbled forward from the impact, planted a foot, and tried to pivot away from the creepers, but her knee thumped against one as she passed by them. The collision sent her tumbling into the grass.

  In a flash, Will stepped forward and knifed the creeper that was still eating. The one Tara knocked aside recovered and sounded a low, creepy moan. Coy was still on his butt; Tara was behind him on her hands and knees. The creeper focused on them, snarled, and shuffled their way. Will readied himself to swing his foot out and trip it when Clay pole-axed it from behind with the dagger-side of his melee stick. The creeper’s head sprayed blood, and it slumped to the ground.

  “Are you two okay?” he asked Tara and Coy. They both nodded and climbed to their feet.

  “Good.” He clapped Coy on the back. “Here we go. It’s a straight shot to the supply building. Stay together. If you get separated meet on the east side of the building. That’s the side that faces the van. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Nine

  * * *

  To Danny’s relief, no creepers were shuffling around inside the exchange. He posted Jiri at the entrance to make sure no wandering dead found their way in, while he, Tara, and Casandro shopped.

  The murky and leaden air inside the windowless exchange made it difficult to see the items on display. The going was slow with only one flashlight to cut through the gloom. They stuffed their bags with men’s and women’s underwear and tee shirts, hoping the sizes would be right. Justin filled a sack half-full with packages of white cotton socks. Danny stuffed as many pairs of jeans in his sack as he had room for; he spread the sizes out and hoped everyone would find a pair that fit them. He held a light for Tara as she picked through an assortment of bras hanging from a circular garment rack.

  “How do you know what size bra the other girls wear?” He asked.

  “Here,” she said, tossing one to him. “Wear this for twenty years, then you won’t have any trouble guessing other women’s sizes.”

  Danny laughed. “I wouldn’t want to wear one of these for twenty minutes,” he said as he tossed it back at her.

  Their last stop was a cold weather clothing display. Danny and Will had spent time the night before discussing whether to use any of their storage space for winter gear. Like the rest of the group, they jettisoned every warm article of clothing they possessed during the long, steamy Missouri summer. It was September now, and though the days were long, sunny, and warm, cool weather was just around the corner.

  The question they pondered was, “Do we make room for supplies we don’t need now, knowing we’ll need them in a few months? Or do we wait until we need the gear, knowing we might have to spend a few weeks scavenging to find everything to keep us warm once the weather turns?” They’d spent much of the night puzzling over it without reaching a definitive conclusion. “If the stuff is easy to get to and you have room to carry it, then make whatever decision you think is best and I’ll stand behind you,” Will had said, clapping him on the back.

  Danny spent a few moments replaying that conversation in his mind, then made his decision.

  “Any room you have left, use it for this cold weather gear,” he told the other two as he dug into the display. They topped off their sacks with thermal underwear, insulated gloves, fleece jackets, Gore-Tex watch caps and insulated socks. The only items they passed over were the heavy coats- they were just too big and bulky.

  “That’s a wrap, sports fans,” Danny said as they tied their sacks shut. “Let’s go see if creepers ate Jiri while we were back here, fondling Tara’s lacy underthings.” He gave her his most lascivious grin.

  She punched him in the arm, hard. “I hope you enjoyed it, big boy. That’s the only thing of mine you’ll ever fondle.”

  “Taradarlin, we both know that’s not true.”Smiling and rubbing his arm, he led them toward the building’s entrance.

  “Hey, Jiri,” He called as they approached the front, “I bet you can’t guess Tara’s bra size. She told me what it is.”

  In response, Jiri held a finger to his lips with one hand and held the other up in a stop gesture. Danny backed against the wall, motioned the others to do the same
, and froze, staring at Jiri. The professor met his gaze and pointed to the door. ‘Creepers out there,’ he was saying.

  Danny cursed under his breath. The three of them moved with quiet stealth toward the front, joining Jiri at the entrance. A handful of the dead shambled about in the street outside the exchange. While he watched, a creeper shuffled up and rocked back and forth across from them, on the other side of the plate glass window. The creeper was a jaundiced shade of yellow, and its clothing hung in tatters, exposing running sores on its skin. Above its cracked and swollen lips, pus flowed from a reddened divot where it’s nose used to be. It ambled into the window with a loud thump!. The sound alerted the other creepers- their heads turned in unison and they stared at the source of the noise for a long moment. Not seeing anything that looked like food, they turned away. The creeper that hit the window bounced a few steps backward, regained its balance, and stared straight ahead. Danny knew it couldn’t see through the tempered glass. Still, it was disconcerting to feel like it was staring right at them.

  “We’ve got to clear this street,” he said in a low voice. “We’re supposed to meet Will and them at the commissary in-” he consulted his watch, “-fifteen minutes. They’ll come hustling up loaded down with supplies and run right into those.” He gestured at the creepers.

  “How do you want to go about it?” Justin asked.

  “Fast and quiet,” he answered. “Assume these creepers were over at the bait fence earlier. If they’ve wandered back here, then so have others. We need to put them down before they can draw more this way.” He examined the lay of the streets and thought for a minute. A plan came to mind, and he considered it for a long moment. Satisfied, he turned to his team.

  “First thing, we leave our sacks in a pile right outside the other door.”

  Will’s team filled their sacks items from the supply building. Coy carried a sheet of paper that listed everyone in the group’s shoe size. He picked through racks until he had new boots for everybody except Tempest- the base didn’t carry shoes that fit an eight-year-old girl. Justin filled his two sacks to the top with blankets and rain ponchos. Clay roamed the room, filling his sacks with a variety of items. He hit the personal hygiene section hard, grabbing toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, and bars of soap. He walked past a section dedicated to batteries. With a shrug, he stuffed handfuls of each size into a bag. He found the canteens and packed away a dozen, then counted out twenty pairs of heavy-duty gloves and crammed those in, too.

  It was Will, though, who hit the mother lode. Wandering around the warehouse- not selecting anything, just looking- he considered and dismissed tools, garden implements, and construction supplies. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but felt he would know it when he saw it. Rounding a corner, he started down an aisle, looking at the racks on his right. He broke out in a cheek-to-cheek grin and clapped his hands. “Hell, yeah!” He exclaimed. The middle third of the rack held several cork boards with long pegs attached. A collection of olive drab MOLLE Packs hung from the pegs.

  A few years ago, he was at a clothing store in Topeka with Becky, Christmas shopping. Bored, he wandered into an army surplus store next door. Inside he found a display of desert-camo rucksacks unlike any backpack he’d ever seen. A sign over the display called the rucks MOLLE packs, short for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, and said they were the current line of tactical backpacks used by the US Army and most of NATO. Intrigued, Will asked the store owner to let him take a closer look at one. He remembered how much the pack’s ingenuity and versatility had impressed him.

  He lifted one off the peg and looked it over, finding it a twin to the one in Topeka. It was an oversized, wrap-around backpack with an optional metal frame. Large and roomy, it contained extra space for an interior hydration bladder that holds up to 100 ounces of water. Speed clips secured webbing to a number of places on the pack’s exterior, allowing for more storage pouches. The pouches could hold a backup pistol, a radio, a flashlight, freeze dried food, ammunition, hand tools, a pair of gloves, or any number of other items, all in their proper place. They eliminated the frustration of digging through a backpack or duffel bag trying to find the one item you need. It had traditional backpack over-the-shoulder carry straps, plus it offered an optional wrap-around vest that attached at the wearer’s chest. The vest had pockets that carried to six rifle magazines arrayed around a flapped pouch made to hold a canteen and a cup. A waist pack that attached beneath the main pack completed the MOLLE, providing the perfect place for a blanket, sleeping bag or poncho.

  With forethought, a MOLLE pack could hold everything needed for the person wearing it to spend up to a month away from his home or camp. And there were enough on the shelves for everybody in the group to have one.

  Will could tell right off that he had to leave behind the metal frames if he was to get sixteen packs back to the group. For a moment he considered outfitting the four of them with a pack now and using them to carry the supplies they’d gathered thus far. It would be a better system for hauling their loot around the base than a grain sack slung over their shoulders. But he decided that it would take too long to assemble and configure the packs to use them now. He made due with stuffing them in his gunny-sacks and letting the group configure them later back at camp.

  He whistled the team together and gave them a moment to admire the packs before addressing them. “Listen up- it gets real serious now. We’ve got to hoof it about seven blocks to meet up with Danny and them. We’ll decide whether to sweep the medical center and hunt for meds or just bug out, based on how many creepers we encounter on the way. You’re carrying two heavy bags each. They will slow you down and tire you out faster than you’re used to. There is nothing in those sacks as important as your lives, guys. If you need to drop them to fight or to run, don’t spend one second thinking about it- drop them. Everybody understand?” He made eye contact with each of them and each said they understood.

  “Alright. Let’s head up front and see if those shots I fired earlier brought in any creepers.”

  Danny, Jiri, and Tara stepped out of the entryway to battle the dead. They looped over to the far side of the street and approached the nearest pair. Jiri’s two-sided ax swung twice and he split the creeper’s heads before they realized he was there. They tumbled to the pavement like twin sacks of wet cement.

  Danny shot a few feet ahead, toward a one-armed creeper wearing a doctor’s coat dyed red with dried blood. He punched it twice in the nose, knocking it backward and off-balance. Before it could right itself, he thrust his Bowie knife through its eye and into its brain.

  The action attracting the remaining dead, drawing them across the street. Casandro had stayed behind at the exchange entrance, and the creepers shuffling across the street were his cue to get moving. He grabbed two of the grain sacks stuffed with canned food and clothing. Bending low, he ran the sacks from the pile in front of the exchange, two blocks south to a bend in the street just past the commissary, where he left them next to the sidewalk. Then he hustled back for two more sacks. His job was to transport the loot to the meet-up point, leaving his three teammates free to clear the street of the creepers.

  They’d put down all but a pair of the dead when three more came ambling from around a corner. Danny ran toward the one in front, and just before they collided he stepped to the side. The creeper was leaning forward in anticipation as it drew even with him, and it went down hard when Danny swept its legs out from under it, landing face first in the street with a wet, meaty splat. Danny put a knee between its shoulders and sideswiped his knife into its ear. He rose to his feet and gazed down the street. During the last few minutes, creepers moans and snarls filled the air. If Will didn’t show up soon, there was a real risk of a herd swarming them.

  Casandro was running the last two sacks to the commissary when he tossed them aside and skidded to a stop. His drop-off pile was in front of a row of small, inexpensive houses. Three creepers had stepped out from between two of the houses an
d zeroed in on him. They shambled toward him, snarling.

  Danny saw them from his position up the street. “Ah, man,” he breathed. “Let’s get down there.”

  Andro had his machete out in a flash. It dangled from his hand, twinkling in the sunlight. Danny watched as he ran, His heart in his throat. It always was when one of his friends battled the dead and he was too far away to help.

  Andro swung on the creeper farthest to his left. He swung from the side, splitting its head just above its ear. The second creeper closed in before Andro had time to draw back the machete. He planted a foot in its stomach and kicked it away from him, then pivoted to swing at the third. His pivot foot slipped, and he fell. He grabbed his elbow and yelled in pain. A creeper loomed over him and he got his good arm up just as the third creeper fell on him.

  He was trying to hold its head back with a hand around its neck, but gravity was working against him and its snapping teeth got closer and closer to his face. Danny arrived just in time. He lashed out without slowing, like a man kicking off to start a football game. The creeper flew, its face caved in and its body limp.

  Danny gave Casandro a hand to help him up. He was wiping dirt off the big man’s back when he heard Tara say “Oh, shit,” in a shaky voice. He followed her gaze and saw at least two dozen creepers shuffling in from around a corner.

  “There’s going to be more behind those,” Jiri said. “We have to split.”

  “Agreed, professor,” Danny replied. He was about to say more when he a familiar voice shouted from the opposite side of the commissary.