He connected, driving the monster into the drywall and creating a crater in it. George quickly backed up a few feet but continued bellowing taunts at the obscenity slumped before him.
Megan watched the madman encourage the rather rotund rotter to pull itself out of the new wall niche and stagger toward him. The first kick connected with its chest, driving it back into the hole. The second sent it to the ground, where George unleashed a flurry of blows to its head while it tried to grab at him. It obsessively scratched and pawed at the man looming above it until Megan heard a distinctive pop and saw its arms convulse and flop to the ground. George stomped on its head a few more times for good measure.
The battle over, he leaned against the wall above his handiwork, panting heavily. Megan let the hand holding the gun drop to her lap and took a deep breath herself. The other stiff, the one George had pulled off of her, lay nearby, its neck bent awkwardly where it had been brutally snapped.
A moment later, George loomed over Megan, his arm extended. He no longer looked frightened, as he had when he was wielding the rifle. His jaw was set, and she could see the determined look in his eyes.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Megan nodded and took his hand. George pulled her up like she weighed nothing. She looked into the van and saw Jason in the doorway, staring out at them. The rifle George had discarded was in his hands, and his eyes held a tinge of fear.
Megan gave him a wink, and Jason responded with a nervous smile. She stuffed the revolver into her pants and moved toward the garage door. George stood watch, tensed for more action, peering through the shattered doorway leading into the house.
She pressed her ear to the wood and listened. There was a great deal of moaning, but none from nearby as far as she could tell. Jeff was still keeping the infected at bay. Megan leaned down to pull the heavy door up by its handle, certain that sooner or later one of his crazy stunts was going to end up getting him killed.
“If he isn’t dead already,” she mumbled under her breath.
* * *
Jeff spotted the van after it pulled out of the garage. Megan spun the wheel in a one-eighty so it faced the road and caught sight of him as he waved her forward. The infected were all over the yard, most falling all over one another in an effort to close on him as he pranced around and taunted them. He had taken the occasional potshot with the rifle, but the yard was a wide expanse and had given him plenty of room to maneuver and avoid the threatening embrace of the infected.
Megan drove in his direction, knocking aside a few stiff bodies attracted by the growling engine. As she drew closer, Jeff waved again, relief painted on his face.
The van skidded to a halt on the grass, and the sliding door opened. Jeff ran for it, and George’s beefy arm shot out, grabbed hold of his shirt and yanked him in. Megan floored it, and they shot down the gravel drive, spraying rocks and dust behind them.
Jeff let out a cheer and pumped his fist as George glared at him. “Woo hoo! We made it!”
“You’re fucking nuts! Do you know that?” George said, shaking his head.
Jeff let out a wild, breathless laugh. His face was red with exhaustion, but he felt invigorated.
“Yep, but I’m still alive,” he said as he slapped George on the back. “We’re all still alive!”
George just gave him another sour look, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Megan pulled them out onto the road, and her eyes widened when she saw how many ghouls were stomping through the cornfields, moving toward the house. Jeff slid into the passenger seat beside her, the grin still on his face. When he looked up and saw the crowd of stiffened bodies, his smile faltered.
“This is never going to end, is it?” she asked quietly.
Jeff stared at a boy in a pair of overalls hobbling toward the van, his stiff legs betraying him as the vehicle passed. He tumbled to the ground and raised his arm again, still reaching for them.
Jeff had no answer for Megan. His smile faded as he let his head touch the window. He didn’t say a word, just watched the endless rows of corn fly by.
Chapter 23
Megan drove slowly, staring out at the flat expanse ahead. The debate over where to go had been short, and she had been in the minority. Manchester was the logical place for them to look for other survivors and a car for George. Even after having lived through Milfield and Gallatin, Jeff was the biggest proponent of checking out the town.
She glanced off into the distance, seeing the occasional stiff body moving in their direction but none close to the road. Many of the buildings and houses looked normal. It took a discerning eye to see the occasional broken window, door hanging ajar, or splash of blood on a sidewalk that broke up the monotony.
As they rolled on, there were no abrupt changes to the landscape, but it was clear they were getting close to Manchester. The houses, previously spread out, were starting to bunch up again. The telephone poles, always a constant alongside the road, were becoming more prolific.
A speed limit sign told them they needed to slow down to forty-five. It was an indication that they were getting close to the town. Beyond the sign were several abandoned vehicles that had been tossed around like matchbox cars. None was in good shape, and many were turned on their sides or flipped entirely.
Up ahead, the road curved out of sight. Before that, it narrowed slightly where a train bridge ran across it. A bright yellow sign hung on the overpass indicating the maximum height at which a vehicle could safely pass underneath. The cheery note stood out against a drab brown backdrop of rusted metal. Megan stared at the opening apprehensively as they moved closer.
No vehicles blocked their passage, but there was a pickup truck that had slammed into the guard rail. The back of the Tundra still peeked out of the ditch on the right side of the road.
“Here we go. Manchester straight ahead,” Jeff announced.
George was behind Megan, and she could almost feel his breath on her neck as he gawked at the damaged vehicles. She heard a grunt of frustration when he saw that none were in driving condition.
As they emerged from beneath the bridge, nothing in the scenery changed. The van glided around a curve in the road that moved them southeast. Four sets of eyes scanning the immediate area for signs of activity saw none. There was no indication of military presence: no barricades, no razor wire, and no corpses.
The road continued to serpentine, now to the north as they moved closer to Manchester. To the left, they saw a plain, squared-off cinderblock building that looked like a bomb had gone off in it. A gaping hole on its front allowed them to see that the inside looked as bad as the exterior. There was a ragged stump of a lamppost in the parking lot. The metal shaft had snapped in several places and was spread across the roadway. The cement base was still intact, and the metal shards sprouting out of it vomited corroded wires. Only the free-standing awning over four gas pumps and a darkened outline of the letters M-A-R-T on the side of the structure gave any hint as to what purpose the building had once served.
A road cut north before the gas station. A sign, badly damaged, pointed travelers down the path, but it was hard to tell what the name of the road was. The sign was bent sideways and caked with layers of clay or mud. As Megan looked closer, her stomach roiled. Some of the filth on the sign was ropy and viscous.
“That’s Route 123.”
Megan glanced over at Jeff, glad for the distraction of his voice as he pointed at the road in question.
“It splits to the north here but merges with the main drag ahead of us. We’ll have to go a bit farther into town and then maybe we can turn south.”
That had been the plan. They would find a car for George, wish him luck, and then find some road that wasn’t too clogged, which would hopefully lead them farther from more clots of infected population.
Megan slowed the van and scanned the gas station. Nothing stirred, and they continued to roll along. Beyond it, the roadway looked almost normal, like it would in any sl
eepy Midwestern town. She gave the building another glance as they passed and noticed more signs facing away from them on the left side of the road. Passing by, she glanced back at them. One welcomed drivers to Harris Township while another informed them they were entering Warren and leaving Clinton County. The other two narrow green signs gave distance markers for towns that were north on Route 123.
George tightened his grip on the back of Megan’s chair as he stared at the last two signs. The words on them were: Morris 10 and Liston 19.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and his eyes darted over to Jeff. “How far is Wildwood from here?”
George looked back at the sign again, his eyes distant. “Thirty, maybe thirty-five miles north.”
Jeff grunted his acknowledgement before turning to stare out the window again.
There were more buildings on both sides of the street past the convenience store. They were widely spaced with ample grassy areas between them. Gravel parking lots were shared by simple, drab tin buildings. There were no streets behind the businesses, just farmland...flat open fields interspersed with small wooded areas. The buildings looked tired and worn down, sporting faded paint and dirty façades. Some looked like they had been abandoned long ago. There were a few boarded-up windows, but it looked like this part of Manchester had been a ghost town long before the infected came. A couple of small billboards for McDonald’s and a new subdivision from Vancouver Builders were ripped and tattered but did their best to dispel the image of a town that had been slowly dying for years. The wood and corrugated tin buildings that stretched along the road looked dated. “Scrubbing Bubbles” Car Wash and Laundromat, Cockrell’s Family Dining, and a Bridgestone Tire Store were just a few of the businesses that welcomed the foursome to the remains of Manchester.
The unnatural stillness outside was a good match for the silence inside the van. The engine noise of the Odyssey only had to compete with the chirping of a few birds and insects.
The road straightened out and they were moving southeast. They saw cars and trucks lined up on both sides of the road in front of even more commercial structures. Some were parked normally while others looked like they had been pushed aside by something huge.
Looking ahead toward the crowd of vehicles, Jeff assessed the situation. “Well, George, we should be able to find you a car in no time.”
Jeff was hunched over, rifle in hand as he stared ahead, looking inside each vehicle for signs of movement. There wasn’t any, and he glanced over at yet another sign that dotted the entrance of the town. It was tattooed with emblems of all the civic organizations that had chapters in Manchester: the Rotarians, the Jaycees, etc. A few of the churches had also joined in with placards encouraging folks to attend the Church of Christ or United Methodist. Like everything else in the town, the sign had seen better days and leaned precariously to one side. A message in the bottom right corner stated that the sign appeared courtesy of McDonald’s.
Jeff saw no bodies, living or dead, anywhere. Sweat rose on his brow as he scanned the area once again for movement.
Near the wooden sign and closer to the van were more buildings. There was a sizeable gap between two of the drab one-story structures at which he was staring. Railroad tracks ran behind it with farmland even farther back. Jeff spied a house off in the distance about a half-mile away with some dense woodland beyond. Nothing moved as he scrutinized the landscape.
On the opposite side of the road, several businesses crowded close to the street for a stretch. More billboards vied for attention along with a bright yellow Dollar General sign close to the road. Small parking lots that were mostly empty provided a gap between the road and darkened buildings. On the other side, the nondescript boxy brown shops were even closer to the road, no farther back than ten or fifteen feet. A row of vehicles served as a buffer between the shops and the van.
They started moving between the two lines of cars, which appeared to stretch about a quarter of a mile down the straightaway. The path between them was tight but gave the van enough room to maneuver. At the beginning of the line, a car was angled sideways on the right side of the road. Jeff stared down at it and nodded to himself.
“Let’s check out all of these cars, but I think that first one might be your best bet.” He gestured with his head as George looked out the window to examine the vehicle.
His eyes grew wide as they drove past the car. It looked good, and so did several others. Megan and Jeff were studying them as well and didn’t notice Jason peering out the rear of the van, even when he moved back to the third row of seats.
“Guys, I think you better look behind us.”
The van slowed and everyone turned to look at whatever it was that had caught the boy’s eye.
Jason had not been too concerned about finding a car for George. The close encounters he’d had with both the infected and the living over the past few days had him on edge. So when he saw the shadow shift near one of the cars, he immediately assumed it was a ghoul. When a head popped up from behind the vehicle, and whoever it was started running, he did a double take. It certainly didn’t look like one of the infected.
“What the—?”
Jeff moved next to Jason, wading past the seats and piles of supplies they had collected. When he looked out the window, he could not believe what he was seeing.
The van came to a stop and Megan turned to see what was up. Now George was in the back as well, and the three were blocking her view.
“Well, what is it?”
One of the cars was moving, the very first one they had seen. The one that had been perpendicular to the others. It had quietly rolled into the middle of the road. Jeff and George shared a glance, confusion etched on their faces.
It was Jeff who realized what was happening first and turned to face Megan, whose look of exasperation at a lack of explanation quickly changed. “Get out of here! Now!”
Megan swallowed another question and quickly turned around. Her foot moved to the gas, but before she could touch it, her eyes widened at what she saw through the windshield.
It was already too late.
While they had been busy studying what was going on behind them, another car had pulled onto the road up front, at the end of the quarter-mile-long stretch of vehicles. They were cut off.
Megan saw a figure pop up over the hood of a Nissan Maxima nearby. It pointed a semiautomatic pistol directly at her head. Another stranger, this one holding a rifle, sheltered behind a Volvo station wagon on the other side of the street.
Jeff rushed back to the front of the van just in time to see another man popping up between the cars outside. Jeff froze between the seats, his breathing harsh. He spied Megan out of the corner of his eye and saw that she had gone rigid as well. In that moment, he wished he could will himself invisible as he saw the man outside taking aim at him with an M16.
“Shit! There are two guys pointing shotguns at us!”
When George heard no response to his comment, he turned and saw that Jeff was not moving. Jason was bent over in his seat, his hands covering his head. Most important, in George’s mind, was the fact that they were not flying down the road to escape the impending attack from behind.
“You, in the van. Show your hands now! Make a move toward any weapons and we start shooting!”
Fear sliced through the four survivors’ minds like a razor as they heard the voice shouting from outside. Slowly, Jeff, Megan, and George raised their hands. Jason, realizing they were not going to be fired on—at least not immediately—sat up carefully and slowly raised his hands as well. As the men outside inched closer to the minivan, Jeff’s mind raced over the events of the last few days. He had not cared whether he lived or died when he fled his house, but there were others relying on him now, and he had more than enough reasons to want to stay alive.
But as he stared down the barrel of a rifle for the second time in as many days, he was beginning to doubt that he was going to last much longer.
The story continues in
/> INTO THE DARK
DARK
STORIES
Well, you’ve gotten this far.
I want to thank you for reading the first book in my trilogy. When this story, and by story I mean the entire trilogy, was written, it was huge. As in over a half a million words huge. I believe that I wrote and wrote until I had poured out every idea, every back story, every detail I could about the characters that inhabit these pages.
The story changed with time and with edits, as all stories do. At first I realized that I was wandering a bit far afield, and did my best to rein myself in by cutting out a lot of Jeff’s inner dialogue. After that, it was the revelation that some of the flashbacks and back stories were taking away from the flow of the action and pacing of the books. The fact of the matter was that I had more than one main character going at that point, or so it seemed. It wasn’t just a story about Jeff; it was a story about Jeff, Megan, George, and Jason. Then with the introduction of other characters in the second book, it became a tale with an even larger base of main characters. The consensus among those whom I asked to read the rough cuts was that the story needed to be centered around Jeff and his experiences and not as much on all the other characters. They were important, but their back stories were distracting in many ways. So after some deliberation, I decided to shave all of that away. In other words, I removed the “baggage” and the clutter that might detract from the main storyline involving Jeff.
But I realized that those additional stories still had merit. They may not have fit into the trilogy, but they certainly fit into the world I had created, and they added additional dimension to all the characters I had created to interact with Jeff, so I started posting them on my blog. Originally, these “Dark Stories” as I had dubbed them, only appeared in the e-book version of the trilogy. Now they are spread out across the trilogy of novels, tucked snugly into the book where they rightfully belong.
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