This Dying World (Book 2): Abandon All Hope

by James D. Dean

  “I thought you said you grew up in Chicago. Didn’t think there were was much greenery in the city.”

  “I was born there, but my mother moved us out to the country when I was younger. All of us but Dan anyway. He was already in high school, but the rest of us were still young. When I think of home, I imagine rolling fields and farmland.”

  “I hear you. I liked living in Cali, but it’s just not home.”

  “Speaking of which,” Jason started as he slowly swerved the van around a motorcycle lying in the middle of the road. “Do you want to try for yours? I wouldn’t argue if you wanted to take a detour.”

  “Honestly,” Murphy sighed. “There’s nothing to go back there for. I have to think that Kansas City is completely overrun. Even if it wasn’t, there’s no one left for me to look for. My parents passed a long time ago, grandparents long before them. No brothers or sisters to speak of, and the rest of the family I haven’t spoken to since I was knee high to a grasshopper.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jason said.

  “I’m not. It means my wife felt bad for how I grew up and spoiled me twice as much on Christmas!” Murphy smiled.

  “Always a silver lining I guess,” Jason chuckled.

  “What about you?” Murphy asked. “Anyone special in your life that we should be thinking about rescuing?”

  “No, not me. Pretty much married to the job. I came close before I signed up. We were pretty hot and heavy, even planned the wedding and everything before I shipped off to boot.”

  “What happened?” Murphy said as he adjusted his rifle between his knees. Popping out the magazine, he thumbed the rounds into his palm, whispering as he counted the bullets.

  “There’s sixteen,” Jason said. “There were sixteen when you counted them twice this morning, there’s sixteen now.”

  “You never know,” Murphy replied. “A couple of them might have had kids since I checked.”

  “If only it worked that way,” Jason sighed.

  “So, what happened to the love of your life?”

  “Turns out she had a pretty dark past that she kept from me,” Jason replied. “She was a heroin addict before we met, and she picked it back up a couple weeks after I shipped off. The little money I made and sent back to her went right into her veins. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, what with the constant thrashing I earned daily. Of course, the money wasn’t enough to support her habit. By the time I got home, she was prostituting herself all over town.”

  “Shit man, that sucks. What did you do?”

  “I tried to help her as much as I could,” Jason replied. “But I couldn’t stick around that long before I had to report in, and there’s no way I would bring her on base in her condition. She refused to get help, and she planned to keep whoring herself out for her fix. I left for my first duty station, and that was the last time I ever saw her. She overdosed about a year later when I was on deployment. I don’t know if I would have gone to her funeral anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, brother. That’s a serious shit sandwich you had to eat. What was her name?”

  “Becca,” Jason sighed. “That’s what everyone called her anyway. It fit her, she was a bit wild and free spirited. Calling her something like Rebecca would seem too proper for her.”

  “There’s been no one since?” Murphy asked as he popped the last round back into his M4 magazine. He slammed the magazine home, drawing back and releasing the bolt catch to chamber a round.

  “Nope. It kind of turns you off relationships when your fiancée becomes a hooker while you’re sweating your balls off to the serenade of your DI for weeks on end. Now I follow my brother Chris’ advice. If you want a solid relationship, have a lot of cheap meaningless sex and get a dog.”

  “How many dogs does Chris have?” Murphy chuckled.

  “None,” Jason laughed, glancing sideways at Murphy. “He got married!”

  Chapter 20

  Mark was gone.

  He was my brother, my friend. I’d met him the same night I met Abby so many years ago. He was there for my wedding. He was Katie’s godfather. He was one of only two men not related to me by blood that I would gladly lay down my life for. But the decaying world had swallowed him up, just as it had my wife.

  The bus groaned as Joe pushed it slowly through the driving snow. Katie crawled back into my lap, curling into a little ball and sobbing. I stroked her hair and rubbed her back, praying she would fall asleep for a little while to escape this nightmare. One more piece of her crumbling childhood ripped away before her eyes.

  Chris sat behind Joe, rocking Faith in his arms. Anna sat next to him, her tears flowing in endless streams as she ran her fingers through Faith’s hair. Faith had no tears to cry. Instead she stared off into nothingness. She had seen too much.

  Lexi was inconsolable, holding Jane tight to her chest and refusing to let go of her sobbing sister. Rosa sat with her, doing her best to calm the teen before she hyperventilated. I didn’t know if Lexi’s grief was because she missed the shot that would have ended Mark’s suffering, or if it was because I had asked her to do the unthinkable. Merciful or not, I’d asked a young teen girl to shoot and kill a friend.

  I added that to my growing list of sins. In twenty four hours, I’d moved at Rosa with harmful intent, threatened to draw my gun against my own brother, and asked a kid to commit murder. Add that to killing an asshole rapist in the garage and crucifying Adam on my brother’s front lawn and I sound like I’m in the running for Ted Bundy’s Man of the Year award.

  We only managed another three hours before the lack of a properly working plow forced us to abandon our travels for the day. We drove into a small town that Joe instantly recognized as Hollandale.

  Joe brought the bus to a stop in front of an auto shop. Next to it stood a two-story red brick building that looked like a promising place to ride out the storm. The place looked as if it had been abandoned long before the dead decided to let us know they had all been playing possum for centuries.

  Chris easily breached the building through a side door with Joe and Matt watching his rear. As the door popped open, they silently made their way inside while the rest of us waited in the bus. After a few tense minutes, Joe poked his head inside the bus to give us the all clear.

  I sat Katie up, taking her by the hand and whispering for her to keep close and quiet. Before leaving, I checked my pocket again, my fingers brushing against the folded piece of paper I had stuffed inside as soon as we had parked. I slipped my hammer into my empty pistol holster before reaching for one of the rifles stacked neatly by the battery shelves.

  “I’ve got it,” Anna said sharply as she hefted it up and away from my grasp.

  Rosa forcefully shoved a bundle of blankets and sleeping bags into my arms. She handed Katie a couple of pillows before returning to the back of the bus to grab a box of MREs.

  “I can help carry some of the heavier stuff,” I volunteered.

  “No,” Rosa replied sharply. “Your hands are bleeding again. You don’t need to do any more damage than you’ve already done.” She glared at me for a moment longer than needed before turning away. I didn’t miss the barely hidden message in her words.

  With blankets and pillows in hand and Katie in tow, we stepped out into an arctic blast of winter’s fury. The wind hit me with such ferocity my breath was momentarily torn from my lungs. The snow bit at my uncovered face like thousands of tiny ice picks needling at my exposed skin.

  Grasping my daughter’s hand, I dropped my head and plowed through the storm. It was only about fifteen feet to the building’s open side door, but it felt like half a mile in the howling winds. Katie felt more like an anchor than a little girl, pulling back against me as we walked.

  I stepped through the open door and felt the temperature suddenly rise in the darkened space. It was more than just shelter from the wind, there was an ambient heat that seemed much warmer than it should for an abandoned building. I turned to check on Katie, and suddenly discov
ered why she felt so heavy.

  Like a daisy chain, three little girls were linked together hand in hand. Katie held Faith’s hand, with Jane following behind her. Without knowing it, I had dragged all three of the kids along through the snow.

  “When did you guys show up?” I asked as I stomped my feet to knock snow free.

  “Lexi said we should all go together,” Jane said in her tiny voice.

  Lexi suddenly appeared in the doorway, her eyes red and swollen from tears that had just recently ceased. She held her rifle in her hands, a backpack full of what sounded like canned goods slung lazily over her shoulder. She pushed past me, making her way up a narrow flight of stairs before disappearing into a dimly lit doorway on her right.

  I followed her up the steps, towing the convoy of children behind me. The door behind me clicked shut as Rosa and Anna stepped inside, stomping the snow from their boots.

  As soon as we made it to the top of the stairs, I was shocked to see how wrong I had been about the place being abandoned. Every aspect of the apartment looked new. Several camping lanterns had been set throughout the rooms, illuminating the fresh peach colored paint on the walls to the thick rose colored carpet on the floor. A floral print sofa and love seat occupied the middle of the living room, adorned with several plush throw pillows. A lazy Susan filled with individually wrapped candies sat atop the dark wood coffee table sitting in front of the long, high backed sofa.

  The walls were lined with shelves, each with their own sets of Precious Moments statues carefully placed atop their own individual doily. (yes, I know what Precious Moments statues are. I’m not proud of it. Let’s move on.) Several framed pictures of people young and old hung from the walls, spaced between various floral paintings.

  A light orange glow danced from what I assumed was the kitchen. The hiss of a gas stove filled the silence in an apartment that felt like a shrine to the grandmas and grandpas of the world.

  “Stoves?” I asked.

  “Propane,” Chris answered simply without looking at me. “I saw the tank outside.” He lay his rifle against the wall before walking out of the room. Moments later, a toilet flushed somewhere in the back of the apartment.

  “Water works too,” I said to anyone that would listen. Not a single person acknowledged me.

  Despite the increasing warmth filling the stale air, there was a stifling chill in the room. Mark’s death had taken everyone’s already raw emotions and rubbed a healthy dose of rock salt into the still open wounds.

  Lexi sat in the love seat, weeping silently. Rosa sat beside her again, pulling Lexi to her shoulder and letting the girl cry. Lexi looked up at me with her red swollen eyes before shaking her head and burying her face into Rosa’s shoulder. Rosa shot me an icy stare before turning her eyes from me as if I was a visage of the devil himself.

  “Katie,” I whispered as I bent down to look at her face to face. “Daddy is going to go to the apartment across the hall. I need to fix something, and I don’t want to bother anyone. Can you be a big girl and keep Faith and Jane company?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said sleepily as she rubbed her eyes with tiny balled fists.

  “That’s my girl,” I said as I peeled her hat from her head and stuffed it into her coat pocket. I kissed her on her head before standing again. As Katie walked over to the other kids I turned away from the group to head across the hall.

  “Take this,” Anna said coldly. I looked back to find her standing behind me, a lantern, blanket, and can of soup in her outstretched arms. “The stove is already on in there. Eat something and get some rest.” I barely had her offerings in hand before she spun around and vanished into the kitchen.

  I lowered my head as I walked out of the apartment and across the narrow hall and into the adjacent space. The apartment next door was also new construction, but far more toned down than the Andy Griffith nightmare next door. A thick blue carpet stretched across the floor, standing out against the apartment’s fresh white paint. Empty shelves lined the walls of the unfurnished living room, a fine layer of dust covering the slick varnished surfaces. White curtains hung in the windows facing the street below.

  I drew the curtain back to get a better view of the area in the mid-afternoon light. Chris’ truck sat on the street below, a thin blanket of snow in its bed and atop the still connected trailer. Across the street, a mostly empty parking lot was vanishing under the snow.

  A single story storage unit sat next to the lot, it’s bright green garage doors stood out brilliantly against the snowy white background. Beyond that, there was nothing but an open field, and a dense tree line swaying in the distance.

  I walked into the kitchen, peeling the lid off the can of tomato soup. I wondered if Anna gave me tomato knowing how much I hate the stuff, but I was afraid if I brought it up the group would banish me to the bus to sleep. So I heated it up over the propane fed flames and prepared myself for the warm meal of red vomit in a can.

  I took a seat on the living room floor, listening to the hushed voices across the hall. I heard Lexi’s sobs and Rosa and Joe doing their best to console her. I listened to the kids talking, trying to make sense of everything in a way only children could. I could hear Jane telling Katie that her Uncle Mark would be happy now, because he’s with Abby and her parents. Faith barely spoke, and when she did her voice was flat and empty.

  Faith worried me. As an adult, I was close to cracking up and booking a one way trip to a padded cell. While the other two kids were affected, Faith seemed more sensitive to what was happening around her. I know Chris saw it too. The concern on his face was plain as day when he watched her.

  Chris and Matt were arguing over the best method to secure the building for a longer stay in case we were snowed in for a while. Matt wanted to be on the move as soon as the sun came up the next day. Chris felt that staying put and regrouping was the better option while the bus was getting repaired.

  I stood up and peeled my coat off shortly after finishing my can of what could loosely be called soup. I picked up my blanket and headed off to the bathroom. I was covered in blood, brain sludge, and a mass of other bodily fluids I didn’t care to think about, and the water was still working.

  I can honestly say that it was the coldest shower I ever remember taking in my life. Shrinkage? I’m talking full on frightened turtle. It didn’t help that it took nearly a half an hour to scrub the gore from every inch of my body. I also had no intention of putting the same grimy clothes back on, so I spent another hour cleaning them in a bathtub full of icy water.

  Wrapping myself in my blanket with nothing but the suit I was born in underneath, I grabbed my pile of wet clothes and headed off to the kitchen and the propane oven. Ever try to dry your clothes in an oven? It took a lot longer than I thought, and I ended up with grill marks across my pant legs. While I waited for my clothes to dry with my bare ass wrapped up in nothing but a blanket, I fully expected a horde of snow shoe wearing undead to lay siege to our little fortress.

  Why? Well as I’ve said before, Murphy has a law, and he’s a class one asshole. That Murphy prick would just love for me to choose between my modesty and bashing in undead brains. It would please that bastard to no end if I were to end up outside in a full-fledged bug out with Mr. Happy flapping in the wind.

  Fortunately, the undead snow troopers never showed up, and I was able to throw on moderately clean and warm clothes. The living room was noticeably darker by the time my clothes were properly scorched and well done. The winter storm had finally passed, and the heavy snowfall had died down to a light flurry.

  “Daddy,” Katie said behind me.

  “Hey, Katie!” I smiled when I saw the layers of caked dirt had been washed away, clean brown hair framing her rosy cheeked face once more. She stood there in pink footie pajamas that were at least two sizes too big for her.

  “Did you take a bath?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Faith said I could wear her jammies, but they’re too big for me. Is it o
kay?”

  “Of course it is!” I said, putting my arms out. She ran to me, engulfing me in her tiny arms. “Was the bath cold?”

  “No. Uncle Chris put water on the stove and made the bath nice.”

  Needless to say, I wanted to slap myself. Granted, I showered because I didn’t want to sit in a bath full of the gore I was washing off, but I could have warmed enough water to at least rinse off with. Despite the moderate warmth in the room, I was thoroughly convinced that the frightened turtle would never come back out of its shell again.

  “You look sleepy,” I said after a long hug. “Are you going night-night already?”

  “No. We’re going to watch a movie on Uncle Chris’ computer. He has Little Mermaid.”

  “I’m happy he remembered to bring it.”

  “Do you want to come watch it with me?”

  “Baby, I wish I could. But I’m not done fixing things yet. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she replied dejectedly.

  “Hey,” I said, taking her face in my hands. “None of that now. Daddy loves you. I just have some work to do. I promise I’ll be with you before you know it. Now you go watch your movie.”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  I hugged her again, longer and tighter than I had before as thoughts of Abby and Mark flittered through my mind. I was tempted to just have her stay with me, and any other night I would have done just that. But that night, I couldn’t.

  “I love you so much, Katie. You remember that, okay? Don’t you ever forget that. Promise me you won’t forget that.”

  “I promise, Daddy,” she said. She kissed my cheek, hugging me once more. “Night-night Daddy.”

  “Goodnight, Katie.” The tear I was holding back finally ran down my heavily stubbled cheek as I watched her walk out the door. She turned and waved at me, a broad smile stretching across her face. I waved back, and she disappeared into the other apartment.

  Taking a deep cleansing breath, I leaned against the wall, sliding down until I was again sitting on the thick blue carpet. I leaned my head against the wall, and waited. Darkness slowly crept across the floor as the sun dipped below the horizon. Over the next hour the winds outside finally stilled, the clouds parting to reveal a bright moon in the sky that cast its rays through the curtain.