“Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you still lose people you care about,” I tell him. “That is how it has always been.”
He starts to cry and buries his face in my jacket.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he whimpers.
I clutch him tightly and try to say something to reassure him, but I can’t bring myself to go on with it anymore.
“Someone will always be here to make sure you're okay,” I tell him. “I can promise you that.”
I let go of Stevie as we start down the road again and his eyes fall on the bodies on the ground around us. He reaches up a hand and wraps his fingers around mine.
As we approach the truck, I notice the cardboard parcels spread on the ground nearby. Some of them look to have been hastily opened a long time ago. The contents are scattered around the road. Items that used to have value, like an alarm clock, a laptop, a high-end food processor are left on the ground like pieces of trash. The rear door of the delivery truck is wide open and there are several bullet holes on the side of the chassis. Hoff climbs behind the wheel and goes to work trying to get the rig started. The remaining corpses along the stretch of highway gradually converge on our position. While it will take the first of them a few minutes to close the distance, if we sit out here too long it’s just a matter of time before we draw more of them than we can handle.
“Not sure I can get her going,” Hoff informs us. He reaches into his pack and pulls out a flathead screwdriver, then climbs back into the driver side door.
“Hurry it up, man,” Quentin urges Hoff.
“Son of a bitch,” Hoff grunts from inside the truck.
“Can you fix it?” Lorento asks the soldier.
“I need more time,” Hoff says.
Midhun moves around the front of the truck, lifts up the hood and studies the engine. He leans over and begins tinkering with something inside.
The scruffy dog moves in front of me and Stevie and lets out a low growl. As the dead encircle the truck, I position myself in front of Stevie and raise the rifle.
“Stay behind me,” I tell Stevie. “Don’t move unless I say.”
“They’re getting close,” Fletcher warns Hoff as he raises his rifle. He begins firing to take out the corpses as they get close enough that we can smell the rot.
“Forget it,” Hoff says. “Battery is dead or something.”
“Come on,” Lorento barks. She raises her pistol and fires into the dead. “We’re out of time.”
“Turn the key,” Midhun says.
No one seems to be paying any attention to him. Everyone is getting ready to run again.
“Turn the key! Turn the key!” Midhun repeats as he slams the hood of the truck.
Hoff turns around at the sound of the hood closing, and then climbs into the truck and hammers the screwdriver into the ignition again. A minute later, the truck engine turns over and growls and coughs. Hoff gives it some gas and the engine revs before the truck settles to a steady rumble. The scent of diesel exhaust fills the air.
“Fucking A, man!” Hoff cheers.
“Piece of pie,” Midhun smiles and gives the soldier a thumbs up as he heads for the back door of the truck.
I grab Stevie and climb inside the vehicle. We crouch down beneath one of the shelves on the wall and Stevie huddles close to me. I can feel him shaking in fear. Stitch hops in the truck and leans his body on the other side of Stevie and pants.
“Hang in there, kiddo,” I tell Stevie.
Lorento climbs in the front of the truck beside Hoff and fires at the oncoming dead from the steps on the passenger side of the truck. Fletcher takes up a defensive position just outside the read door and opens fire on the corpses. He keeps firing until the rest of the group is aboard the vehicle.
“Everyone in?” Hoff asks as he slides the front door closed.
Fletcher stops firing, but he lingers just outside the rear door for a long moment.
“Get in the truck, Chuck,” Danielle urges the pilot.
Fletcher grabs on the door frame and lifts a boot on to the rear bumper, pauses, and then turns his head and stares back down the road from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. It almost looks like he is considering heading off alone on foot.
“Damn it,” Lorento growls through the opening into the back of the truck.
He looks back inside the truck and his eyes lock with mine for a moment. Then he shifts his gaze toward the kid pressed up against my side.
“For the record, this is still a terrible fucking idea,” Fletcher grumbles as he climbs to the back of the truck.
“You think everything is a terrible idea,” Danielle snorts and rolls her eyes.
The vehicle pulls forward and we roll down the highway watching the dead that straggle down the road recede into the distance.
Fletcher clears his throat. When I glance over at him, he fixes his gaze on me.
“So how did you folks end up with ol’ Spooky out here anyway?” Fletcher asks.
“It’s a long story,” I say. The fact that they are curious about us doesn’t surprise me, but after the last few days of hell I don’t really feel like doing a lot of talking.
“We got a long way to go back to Missouri,” he says. “Might as well get to know each other a bit.”
Twenty-seven
“That’s a hell of a story,” Fletcher says after I finish telling him about the last several days.
“You ever hear anything from the people at the farm house?” Blake asks. He reaches a hand up and strokes the head of the shaggy dog beside him. Stitch leans into his leg and stops panting and licks his tongue around his mouth.
“No,” I shake my head. “Bishop told us he tracked them down. Maybe that was how he found out that we were headed this way.”
“Can you tell us anything else about this cave or whatever it is that Bishop is holed up in?” Quentin asks. “You’ve been inside there?”
“I haven’t been inside,” I admit. “I just followed one of their trucks back there. I was trying to get an idea of the size of their group to see how concerned we needed to be. It’s a huge facility called Springfield Underground.”
“I’ve heard of that place,” College Boy says.
“You don’t know shit, College Boy,” Nat laughs. She nudges his ribs with an elbow.
“No really,” he insists. “It used to be a mine, but they made manufacturing and storage facilities inside and rented the spaces out to lots of different companies. I read about how all these data centers were moving into facilities like that because they are more secure against virtually every kind of possible disaster. The whole place is like a hundred feet underground. If that’s where they are, they’re pretty damn smart.”
“Sounds like a good place to ride out the apocalypse,” Fletcher says.
“Probably got all kinds of useful shit down there, too,” Quentin adds.
“What about access?” Blake asks me.
“It looked like they only use one entrance,” I say. “The smaller one. It’s pretty heavily guarded. I found another entrance near a large parking lot, but they moved some semi-truck trailers to barricade the loading bay doors.”
“No way we’re getting in there,” Fletcher shakes his head.
“There might be a way,” I say. “In between the two entrances I noticed this big hole in the ground surrounded by a barb wire fence.”
“How big?” Blake asks.
“Maybe thirty feet across. It looked like it must go all the way down into the facility.”
“Why would they leave that open?” Nat asks. “That seems stupid.”
“Ventilation, maybe,” Danielle says. “They might have no choice but to leave it open.”
“They didn’t seem to have anyone guarding it on the surface,” I say.
“It could work,” Blake says to Quentin.
“It’s a stupid idea,” Quentin says. “A real stupid idea.”
Blake responds with a smirk.
“Shit,” Quentin mutt
ers.
“Say we get inside,” Fletcher pauses and jerks a thumb in my direction. “She said there is a least a few hundred people inside there. Probably with a hell of a lot more firepower than us, too.”
“A lot of them are just people that are scared,” I say. “Families. Children. They probably hate Bishop just as much as we do. They won’t fight.”
“You don’t know that,” Fletcher shakes his head.
The truck swerves to the left and rumbles over the rough surface of the shoulder, kicking up pebbles that pepper the undercarriage. I grab onto the shelf over head to keep myself from sliding around on the floor.
“When people are scared that makes them even more dangerous,” Blake says. “We all know that by now.”
“Still,” Danielle says. “There’s innocent people down there.”
“No one is innocent,” Quentin disagrees. “Those people are just as guilty because they aren’t doing anything to put a stop to it.”
“That’s not true,” Danielle insists. She crosses her arms and leans her head back against the wall of the truck.
“If Scout is right,” Blake pauses to consider his next words, “and some of those people are just there out of fear, don’t we need to find a way to stop him? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”
“I’ve dealt with psychopaths like this Bishop guy before,” Nat says. She pushes the wispy blonde bangs out of her eyes to look up at Fletcher. “You know what I went through in that pharmacy. I’ve been held against my will and treated like no human being should ever be treated. So, I’m fucking in.”
“We might even run into Dom again,” Quentin says. “Get a little payback.”
“That part sounds pretty good to me,” Danielle says.
“Am I the only one here with an ounce of goddamn sense?” Fletcher asks. He holds out his hands and looks around the faces in the back of the truck. “You got to be kidding me.” He sighs and slumps back against the wall across from me and covers his face with his cowboy hat.
“Fucking nutjobs,” Fletcher mutters to himself, just loud enough so that his words could be heard by the rest of us over the sounds of the truck.
Hoff steers the delivery truck off the highway and onto the quiet backroads. I rearrange Stevie so his head rests in my lap, and I watch him as he drifts off to sleep. The muscles of his jaw twitch and he grinds his teeth as he clutches the hem of my jacket in his small fist. I comb my fingers through his greasy hair and watch him until his face relaxes. My eyelids ease closed, too, as the rocking motion of the truck lulls me to sleep.
I start to dream immediately about being back at my house outside of Memphis. I can smell the azaleas that grow wild in the field in the nearby nature preserve. It’s a summer day and the boys are playing football in the backyard. The sound of their laughter and squeals that used to make me cringe seems so pleasant now. I close my eyes and listen as the sun warms my skin. Then I hear a scream. I open my eyes and there are corpses coming at me from every direction.
“Ow!” Stevie yells.
My eyes open up and I look down and notice I’m practically pulling hair out of his head. I relax my grip and he pushes my hand away from him.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“That hurted,” he whimpers.
“I didn’t mean to,” I tell him. “Go back to sleep, kiddo.”
He lets out a long breath and closes his eyes and quickly falls back asleep. I look over and notice Steven is staring at me with a concerned expression on his face.
“Bad dream?” he asks.
I just nod my head. The sky outside is black now. I glance up at the lights in the ceiling of the truck and the other tired faces that surround me.
“How long was I out for?” I ask Steven.
“Maybe half an hour,” Steven shrugs. He yawns into his fist and squirms around to find a more comfortable position on the floor, eventually settling with the side of his head leaning against the wall of the truck. “Sure hope he finds a place to stop for the night soon. Can’t take much more of this,” Steven says as he closes his eyes.
I close my eyes again, too, but I can’t bring myself to fall back asleep yet. I am afraid of what I will see if I do.
The squeal of the brakes as the truck slows tells me to open my eyes again. Hoff pulls the delivery truck off the road. We rumble to a stop in a gravel parking lot, kicking up a cloud of chalky dust in the night. The engine turns off and Hoff appears a moment later in the opening to the front of the truck.
“Where are we?” I ask him.
“Some church,” he says. “If it’s clear we’ll rest up here for the night. We’ll have to find some more fuel in the morning.”
“I’ll take Stitch and check the church out,” Blake offers. He gets to his feet and pats the dog on the head. The dog hops out the rear door of the truck and looks around. Stitch leans back and stretches a front paw out as he turns his nose up and sniffs the air.
Quentin groans as he hauls himself up off the floor and follows Blake out the door as well. He checks the magazine of his rifle and then glances around the darkness.
“You good?” Blake asks.
Quentin nods.
“Be ready to haul ass just in case,” Blake tells Hoff, and then the two men and the dog disappear into the night.
“Any idea where we’re at?” I ask Hoff.
“Not really,” he says. He pulls a crumpled bag of sunflower seeds out of his pocket, shakes the last few into his hand, and tosses it out the door. “Kind of hard to navigate in the dark without a map or anything.”
“You did good, big guy,” Fletcher says from beneath the brim of his hat.
Hoff grunts in acknowledgement and shoves the seeds into his mouth.
“Will you quit shooting the shit and give me a hand, Hoff?” Lorento calls from behind him.
The big soldier rolls his eyes and moves down the narrow aisle and out the back of the truck. A few seconds later, I hear the front passenger door of the truck open and Lorento starts swearing and complaining and ordering Hoff around.
“Deep down, I’m sure she’s a real good person,” Fletcher jokes.
Blake and Quentin appear at the rear door of the truck a few seconds later.
“Looks clear,” Blake says. “Let’s get inside.” He holds out a hand and Danielle hangs on to it as she steps down off the truck. Even though it is just a minor show of consideration, I can’t help but notice it.
Steven gets to his feet and bends down to lift Stevie off my lap, but I stop him before he wrecks his damn shoulder again.
“Your shoulder,” I remind him. I swat his hands away before he can scoop the kid up.
“Let me,” Midhun says. He looks up at Steven. “If that is okay?”
“Sure,” Steven says. “Thanks.”
Midhun gently slides his hands beneath the sleeping child and cradles him in his arms. He stares down at the young face and even rocks him a bit like a baby as he hums softly and exits the truck.
I wait until everyone else is out of the truck to move. Steven waits for me at the door and eyes me for a long moment as I gather the motivation to get up and head inside.
“You coming?” he finally asks.
I roll my head to the side and stare at him through the narrow slits of my eyelids.
“Eventually,” I smile.
“I’ll wait for you,” he says. He swivels his head to check the surrounding area, then he leans himself against the rear door of the truck. Really, I just wanted a minute to myself. A few moments to stop worrying and just listen to the crickets and feel normal again. I guess that is just too much to ask, even now. A pack of yipping dogs start howling at the moon. The sound is fierce and wild and haunting all at once. What were once our companions are now feral and vicious creatures that will not hesitate to murder you in order to survive another day. The sad truth is, we’re not really all that different from them.
“Better get inside,” Steven reminds me.
“All right,” I agre
e. “I’m coming.”
I shoulder the rifle and my pack and hop down off the back of the truck. The old wooden church creaks and groans. I look up and down the stretch of desolate country road, even though there isn’t much I can make out in the darkness. It’s more of a ritual now than anything; always looking over your shoulder so nothing sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
I turn toward the building when I hear Steven’s boots scraping across the gravel lot loud enough to wake the dead. Usually, it’s the kind of careless thing that would drive me crazy. Now, I just realize how tired he is and I can’t blame him for walking around like a zombie. So I bite my tongue and follow him inside.
Twenty-eight
When I open my eyes in the morning, I stare at the gentle beams of sunlight angling across the rows of pews in the old church. For several minutes, I don’t move but just enjoy the quiet and the stillness. The moment lasts until my stomach starts to complain to be fed. I can’t even remember when the last time I ate was.
Once I manage to slip my arm out from beneath Stevie’s head and tuck my jacket there instead, I tiptoe over the creaky floorboards and step outside. I stretch my arms and smell earthy scent of the wet air that only comes after a storm. But I also notice another scent. I look around and spot Fletcher leaning against the front of the church.
“Is that pot I smell?” I ask.
He lifts a joint to his lips and takes a puff.
“You going to call the cops?” he jokes.
Fletcher holds the joint out for me to take, but I shake my head. I only tried it once before, when I was in high school, and I didn’t much care for the stuff. It made me paranoid, which is my usual state now anyway.
“It keeps me sharp,” Fletcher says.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” I tell him.
“I wasn’t,” he says. Fletcher brings the joint to his lips again and sucks down some more smoke. He exhales another thick plume and watches it drift away into the sky.
Rise of the Dead (Book 2): Return of the Dead Page 17