Haven (Book 1): Journey

by Switzer, Brian M.

  Becky looked at her and shook her head, which just made Tara angrier. “It’s a different world now, Becky. It’s not a soft, ‘everyone is equal and what’s most important is that everyone’s feelings are actualized’ world. It’s a hard, survival-of-the-fittest world, and the quicker everyone figures that out, the better the chances for this group to survive.”

  Tess held up her hand in a stop gesture. “You’re wrong. It’s not ‘survival of the fittest’, or I’d be dead. People in this group, you included,”- she pointed a finger at Tara- “save my life every day. I don’t kick the doors in on sweeps, and I don’t take the lead when we fight creepers. Other people do those things, and that’s why I’m still alive. People helping each other is the reason I’m alive.”

  She leaned toward Tara with tears in her eyes.

  “You’re my sister and I love you, but I don’t want to live in the world you’re describing. Where people only care about their immediate needs and their own survival, and you don’t do everything possible to help a sick little girl. If our humanity is gone, why the hell are we fighting on? What are we trying to start over for?”

  Tara squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Because it’s better than the alternative- laying down. That’s the only choice we make anymore, little sister. Whether to fight or lay down.”

  “I can’t accept that. There has to be more, something to live for.”

  The discussion waned. Tara’s eyes still blazed, and Tess and Becky wouldn’t make eye contact. Her anger tried to boil over; with an effort, she forced it back down. It wouldn’t do her any good to stand here yelling at her last living relative or the only woman in the group she considered a friend.

  “Listen, I’m not dealing with my frustration very well. I’m sorry if I lashed out.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. She hated to say she was wrong, especially when she didn’t feel she was. Better to smooth over ruffled feathers than have her sister look at her as if she were a monster, though.

  “You two go ahead, I’m going to stay back here and keep an eye out.” Tess gave her a little hug, and she and Becky walked toward the house. Tara watched them go, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  Sylvia was beside herself. Tempest’s last fever spiked to a terrifying level. She was baking; the heat came off her in waves. She woke once all morning, spending an hour in a state of delirium. She kept calling out to her father and screaming about the monsters in the room. And Sylvia’s only treatment options consisted of putting cool compresses on the child’s forehead and pumping Tylenol down her.

  She was in the bathroom, pouring bottled water over washcloths to use as compresses. I don’t even have a way to make them a little bit cool, she thought, looking at the compresses with a bitter gaze. She glimpsed herself in a mirror over the sink and stopped in her tracks.

  Her bloodshot eyes looked dazed, and dirty tear-tracks ran down her cheeks. Her hair was dirty and matted and her face had a pale cast to it. This won’t do. She thought. This won’t do at all. My baby will wake up and need her Momma, not this scary-looking woman staring back at me.

  After plugging the sink and pouring in half a bottle of water, she used a bar of soap from the shower and the water in the sink to clean her face, hands, and arms. She found a bottle of Visine in the medicine cabinet and squirted a few drops in each eye, then brushed her teeth and applied deodorant. She had just started brushing her hair when she heard a commotion down the hall and several people called for her, there tones urgent. Sylvia tossed the hair pick aside and ran to the living room, where she’d remade a sofa into Tempest’s sickbed.

  Her daughter was convulsing on the couch. Her back arched and buckled, and her legs drummed against the couch’s armrest. The tiny hands that held Sylvia’s so gently were curled into tight little fists and she was making gagging noises.

  They might have stood and stared at her until she died or the convulsion ran its course if Justin hadn’t come in to see what the noise was about. He rushed to the young girl’s side and snapped at Sylvia. “Come help me!”

  That got her moving and she hurried over next to Justin.

  “Help me roll her on her side,” He commanded. “Put something in her mouth so she can’t bite down and hurt herself.” They rolled Tempest over and Tara rushed over with a spoon; Justin grabbed the utensil and placed it on her tongue.

  He grabbed her leg and wrapped both hands around it to limit its movement. “Now hold her limbs, gently, so she can’t thrash around.”

  It seemed to Sylvia that hours passed with her daughter kicking and quaking, though it wasn’t more than thirty seconds. The convulsions slowed and then stopped. Tempest moaned once and slipped back into unconsciousness. Her mother held her for a bit, then laid her head back on her pillow. She adjusted Tempest’s Addy American Girl doll under her arm and wiped her brow. Upset as she was, she didn’t cry. She vowed that she was through crying as long as her baby lived.

  “Thank you,” she said to Justin, in a trembling voice. “I froze. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “No problem,” he replied with a smile. “I was glad to help. We’re family.”

  “Where did you learn that?” Tara asked, looking at Justin with admiration.

  “I used to watch a lot of TV. That’s what they always do on TV when someone goes into convulsions.” He shrugged his shoulders, then turned and left the room.

  Sylvia watched him go. Hurry back, Will, she thought. Please hurry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  The team came upon an oddity just east of Buffalo- the bridge over an unnamed creek that ran through a deep ravine was gone. The road ran right to where the bridge should be, then ceased to exist with no warning. They stood well back from the edge of the pavement and looked down at the small stream percolating twelve feet below. Less than three feet wide, the creek meandered along in no particular hurry. Sections of the bridge, parts of its stanchions and pilings, and chunks of road slab were piled on each side of the ravine and scattered across it. The faces of the ravine were steep and pockmarked with hardy bushes that eked enough nutrition out of the clay-filled soil to live, but not to flourish. Jagged edges of rock rose from the clay amongst a mix of knee-high weeds and spots of yellowing grass.

  “Do you suppose the bridge washed out?” Coy asked, his tone dubious.

  “I don’t see how a little trickle of a creek like that could wash out a concrete bridge,” said Jiri in a doubtful tone.

  “Maybe there was a lot of rain and the creek was way up?” Clay wondered.

  “The creek was up enough to wash the bridge out but not enough to wash the pillars and concrete downstream?” Jiri pointed at the debris piles laying at the bottom of both sides of the ravine. “No, somebody blew this.”

  “Who would do that, and why?” Coy asked.

  “Possibly the town, to keep people out.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Will said. “Just skirt around it and find another way into town.”

  They backtracked to the nearest side street and turned north. Three blocks later the creek diminished to the size of a branch that passed under the street through a culvert. Danny pointed the Tahoe toward town and drove the three blocks back to Main Street.

  No one knew what to expect in Buffalo. For the entirety of the trip south, they made a concentrated effort to avoid towns. Except for a few quick surgical strikes after supplies, they gave populated areas a wide berth.

  According to the map of the town, they had seven blocks to travel from the city limit sign to the pharmacy. The first two blocks of Main Street had burned to the ground- not a structure stood on either side of the street. They drove past two residential blocks lined with abandoned houses. The next block was mixed- some residential, some business. The stores all had busted windows and were empty inside, save for a few items the looters left behind.

  At the next intersection a car laid on its side, pinning a creeper underneath. It snarled and reached for the Tahoe with both hand
s as the truck crept by.

  Four corpses lined the sidewalk in a neat row in front of a diner on their left. Each had a small bullet hole in their foreheads; blood, bone shards and chunks of brain splattered the wall behind them.

  A creeper hung from a lamp post on the corner. A cardboard sign around its next read ‘looter’. Other creepers ate most of it below the knees before it turned.

  Two bodies, one headless, laid in the street.

  They were two blocks from the pharmacy. On the left was a two-story building been white long ago. The sign out front read Morris Farm and Seed. Someone had painted, in large black letters, across the front of the business:

  And I looked and behold a pale horse

  And his name was Death

  And Hell followed with him.

  Goodnight Buffalo! It’s been real!

  “Didn’t get that verse quite right,” said Jiri.

  “They got the general idea across, though,” said Clay.

  “There’s a priest with a crossbow,” Danny said in a conversational voice, pointing to the other side of the street.

  An old stone church sat halfway up the next block and on the opposite side of the highway. A set of steps led to a big portico in front of the church and a sign beside the front door read ‘Buffalo Methodist Church’. A man dressed in black with a white collar held the door to the church open with his foot. He pointed a large crossbow, arrow-nocked and ready to shoot, at the truck.

  “Keep moving,” Will said. “Don’t stop for anything until we get to the pharmacy.” The priest tracked them with his bow as they drove by, disappearing back into his church once they passed by.

  “Right up there on the left,” Will pointed. Just ahead of them was a medical clinic followed by a little side street. The pharmacy sat on the opposite corner.

  “Pull up there, Coy, right in front.” As they pulled into the parking lot, Will felt a jolt of hopefulness- the picture windows that fronted the pharmacy weren’t broken; perhaps it hadn’t been looted.

  The Tahoe coasted to a stop right outside the front doors and Will fired orders to the team. “Coy- keep it running and in gear. Clay- you’re outside security. I’ll shoot through the door, then we go in hard. Me and Andro sweep left, Danny, you and Jiri right. Once we’ve swept and figured out where the counter is Me and Jiri go over it.” He looked at the ex-professor. “Have you got the list of drugs we’re after?”

  “Right here in my shirt pocket.” Jiri patted his pocket for emphasis.

  “Outstanding. Stay back when I blast that door- I don’t want any of you hit by flying glass. Danny?”

  “Let’s go kick their ass so hard they have to take off their pants to eat.”

  All four truck doors burst open at once as they exploded from the SUV. The rest of the team hung back while Will popped off three shots at the pharmacy door. Clay raised his rifle and put down a pair of creepers following the Tahoe in from the east. Will kicked in the remaining glass in the door frame and inside team rushed through the frame.

  The pharmacy was shaped like a rectangle with aisles of over-the-counter medications to the left and a counter on the right. The prescription medications were behind the counter. It was an easy sweep- the store was empty. Jiri vaulted the counter, list in hand. There was a steady but not constant boom of rifle fire from outside.

  “Andro, Danny- go support Clay. We’ve got this,” Will told them.

  “There’s no kind of order to this shit,” Jiri complained. He was sifting through the pill bottles on the shelves. “They’re not alphabetized and not grouped by type. It seems random.”

  “Keep looking- we only need two or three on that list” He listened to the gunfire outside. “But hurry.”

  Thirty seconds passed before Jiri exclaimed “Bingo! Cephalexin.” He tossed Will a pill bottle the size of a jelly jar.

  “Good job. Find more.”

  By now Jiri was grabbing bottles by the handful, glancing at them, and tossing them aside. After what seemed like seemed an eternity to Will, the professor yelled out.

  “Now we’re cookin’! Two bottles of azithromycin, one doxycycline, and a big bottle of Cipro. We are golden!”

  “Great. Bag it up. We gotta go- we have no time.”

  Jiri grabbed a bag from atop the counter and stuffed the bottles inside, then crammed the bag in his pack. He vaulted back over the counter and they rushed for the door.

  Dozens of creepers came at them from both ends of the highway and across the street. Clay and Casandro were firing at the dead to the north, Coy and Danny to the South. They did an admirable job of dropping the creepers once they got within thirty yards of the Tahoe, resulting in a growing ring of downed creepers. That made shooting them easier because the late arrivals tripped over those already on the ground; the shooters stopped them with headshots before they lumbered back to their feet. A regular succession of creepers came at them from behind the pharmacy, leading to a growing pile of corpses at each end of the building, too.

  Will released the shoulder strap that held his M4. “Coy, get behind the wheel. Jiri, get those drugs in the truck,” he ordered, then took Coy’s place in the firing line.

  He fired three times and dropped two creepers. One of them had its throat torn up so badly that its head lolled over atop its shoulder as it wobbled towards them. POP! Red goo exploded out the back of its head and it fell in a heap.

  “Coy, are you ready?” Will yelled.

  “Yes. Let’s go!”

  The shooting stopped as the team hurried to join Coy and Jiri in the Tahoe.

  “Swing out of here to the west and double back around,” Will told Coy. “There’s more of these things coming from the other way. Avoid hitting them when you can- it wouldn’t do to get hung up in a pile of creeper spines.” The closest infected was thirty yards away when the Tahoe rolled toward the road.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, please keep your hands inside the ride at all times it is in motion,” Danny intoned, taking on the persona of a bored carnival ride operator.

  Coy aimed the Tahoe for a small crease in the oncoming creepers. The truck rose and fell through a series of jostles and bumps when he drove over the pile of fallen creepers. The dead still standing turned toward the Tahoe but could only slap at the sides of the big truck as it passed them by.

  After he pulled back out onto Main Street, Coy stopped so they could get a good look around.

  “Mercy,” Will said, as he gave an appreciative whistle. Creepers were shuffling and shambling towards them from every direction. They were streaming in from between houses and businesses, stumbling over curbs and tripping over one another. Their snarls and moans filled the air, even with the windows up and the AC on. “The natives sure are restless.”

  The creepers from the parking lot neared the Tahoe. “Get us back to camp, Son,” Will said. He fumbled with the buttons that controlled the SUV’s seat, found the one he wanted, smiled, and reclined his seat.

  He would never admit it to anyone, but Clay sometimes wondered if the outbreak was the best thing that ever happened to him.

  Two years of college life and too much cheap beer and Taco Bell had softened him up and added twenty-five pounds to his frame. If they ever saw him chubby like that, his asshole bully of an older brother would make jokes about Clay’s ‘man boobs’ and their bastard of a father would laugh himself into a hemorrhage.

  But seven months of day-long physical exertion coupled with a reduced caloric intake and the absence of cold beer had turned his body lean and hard. Brianne gushed about it often when they snuggled up next to each other in his sleeping bag. When he looked at his reflection in a mirror he saw a lean, well-toned man with a deep tan looking back at him. Before, he had always kept himself clean-shaven. Now he always had three or four days’ worth of beard and no matter how crazy things got, he made time to keep it trimmed. Brianne said it gave him a rugged look, a manliness that he lacked when clean-shaven. He never said so, but he agreed with her.

  He was
a valued and important member of a team. He possessed important skills hard to find in this strange new life. Those facts took him by surprise when he thought about them. For as long as he could remember his father told him he was talentless and useless and that he had nothing to offer the world. The only thing he was good for was turning dirt on his father’s scrub farm outside Harper, Kansas- and maybe not even that.

  His senior year at Chaparral High, a consolidated school for the kids from Harper and nearby Anthony, he demonstrated enough ability on the football field that a couple of small local colleges showed some interest in him. One of them sent a recruiter to watch him and several players on the opposing team when the Chaparral Roadrunners played The Red Rage of Conway Springs near the end of the season. It was an unseasonably cold Friday night in early November. A strong wind roared in from the west and at times fat, lazy snowflakes speckled the night sky. The Red Rage was a perennial state power and defending Class 3A State Champions. The Roadrunners were outmatched and the game was a route, but Clay played well from his dual positions at tight end and linebacker. On the offensive side of the ball, he dominated the defender across from him (Chaparral still ran the single wing; there was no such thing as a pass-catching tight end on Coach Abert’s Roadrunners). Chaparral didn’t run too many successful plays that night, but most of the positive ones they ran were around Clay’s end. On defense, he made several tackles and recovered a fumble.

  In the parking lot after the game, the recruiter congratulated him for a good game. “I’d be surprised if we didn’t talk again soon,” the man said and gave Clay a warm handshake. He drove home that night elated. If four years of football at a shitty Division III school was the ticket off the farm and away from his father, it was one he would gladly buy.

  The next morning his father looked at him across the breakfast table. His thinning hair stuck out in all directions and his bloodshot eyes bore a mean, hard gleam that usually spelled trouble. He sat there with egg yolk drying on his chin and told Clay that football took up too much of his time, so he had to quit the team.