The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel

by James Cook

  Behind the cases of ammunition and cardboard boxes lay three ghillie suits, neatly rolled and tied, one for me, one for Mike, and one for my father. Blake’s had been in his Jeep.

  I had kept my father, as well as Lauren and Blake, out of mind as much as possible over the last few of weeks. But seeing Dad’s old camouflage caused a bolt of grief to lance through me, twisting my stomach and cutting with renewed pain. Mike didn’t notice and reached inside to retrieve the suits, making me grateful for the sullen, ambient grayness of the morning.

  “That field over there is tall enough to hide us,” Mike said. “We’ll go straight at it, then turn west and work our way back to the Humvee.”

  I cleared my throat. “Works for me.”

  “You okay?”

  “Not really, but let’s do this anyway.”

  Mike studied me a few seconds, then handed me my ghillie suit without a word. We both attached suppressors to our rifles, grabbed a couple of grenades each, and swapped out our red-dot sights for VCOG scopes. Once outfitted, we made our way up the hill in a crouch, going to our bellies near the summit. From there it was a question of moving slowly, not allowing ourselves to rush, and being careful not to disturb the grass around us. A few minutes in, a strong wind picked up from the east allowing us to move more quickly.

  Just as the sun cleared the horizon, we stopped behind a thicket of vines covering an old, slowly rotting wooden fence. I made my way to Mike’s position and spoke to him in whispers. “Now what?”

  “We move in,” he said. “The sun is at our backs; it’ll make us harder to see. Stay low and follow my lead.”

  The two of us crawled to the edge of the field where we came to a dirt-and-rock-strewn clearing patched with clusters of short brown grass. Although it was still early morning, the sun seared down from a cloudless sky, raising sweat on my back and warming my rifle under my hands.

  Tin roofs of low buildings shimmered in the near distance, waves of undulating heat rising and dissipating, the pop and creak of expanding metal on plywood audible from where I lay. The two of us peered through our scopes, scanning. Minutes ticked by, but we saw no movement, no indication of occupants.

  “I think it’s safe to approach,” Mike said. “But keep your eyes open.”

  We stood up and moved swiftly across the clearing, intent on the nearest building. Once there, we put our backs against the bricks and moved to opposite corners. Peeking around, I saw low walls with empty space above them, four-by-four columns supporting a slanted roof, and narrow doors permitting entry into wide, dirt-floored stalls. The entrances were too small for horses. Sheep maybe?

  To the north, barbed wire fence surrounded about ten acres of corral. Beyond where I stood were five more mini-barns of identical construction, a shack the size of a small camper, and two open-air sheds with rusted tools dangling from wall hooks. Past these were a few livestock trailers.

  Looking more closely, I saw the tires on the trailers were inflated and showed no signs of dry rot. The wire comprising the corral was well tended, and the water trough by the gate was full but not scummy. By all appearances, the ranch had been, until recently, an active operation. Whoever owned this place had not abandoned it very long ago.

  Rocks crunched softly under Mike’s boots as he moved closer. “Looks clear on my side.”

  “Same here.”

  “Let’s split up. I’ll take the buildings this way, you search over there.”

  “Got it.”

  Mike leap-frogged around me while I swept the stalls closest to us. Finding them empty, I moved on to the next building, wincing at the noise my steps made in the loose, omnipresent gravel. The vegetation immediately around the stables had been worn away by hundreds of trampling hooves, with some of the prints still visible in the hard-packed dirt.

  Definitely sheep.

  The door to every stall was open. I spotted a line of old, washed out tracks heading westward, indicating whoever owned this place had let the animals go free. I admired his or her decision; if I had been in their place, and all hope was lost, I would have done the same thing. Better to let the critters take their chances in the wild than doom them to starvation or death at the hands of the infected. Maybe years from now people would be hunting wild sheep and raising them for wool. It was an interesting thought.

  Just as I turned to walk to the shed at edge of the field, Mike let out a startled curse and I heard the muted crack of his carbine.

  Then came the moans.

  It started as one, then four or five, and then I lost count as more groaning answered, coming from a stable to my left. A pair of gray hands knocked aside the door of the shed I approached, followed by a gore-streaked old man in ragged clothes. He stumbled into the brightness of early morning, head swinging side to side, ears tilted toward the sky. More infected lurched out after him, also swiveling their heads.

  In the space of seconds, where there had been peaceful silence, more than a dozen undead had appeared. In the field ahead of me, I saw more emerge from the tall growth, standing up unsteadily, looking dazed as if they had been sleeping. The sound of Mike’s rifle went from a slow trickle to a frenetic barrage.

  “Caleb, fall back!”

  I raised my rifle and fired without thinking, dropping the five infected closest to me. There was a grating, shuffling sound behind me, and I turned just in time for a ghoul to seize my arm and lunge at me. I let out a terrified yelp and pulled away, but the creature had a grip like steel. Its teeth snapped shut less than an inch from my bicep. With no time for a plan, I raised the barrel of my rifle and shoved it sideways into the ghoul’s mouth. It bit down on the hardened steel, teeth chipping and cracking from the pressure.

  I let go of the gun just in time for the creature to start shaking its head back and forth like a dog and crack me across the temple with the stock. Stars danced in my vision as I dropped to one knee, drew my pistol, and fired a shot upward through its throat. Red and black mist erupted from the back of its head, the painful grip on my arm releasing instantly as the ghoul slumped to the ground.

  I stood up and turned a quick circle, gun at the ready, legs rubbery from the blow to my head. Another ghoul had made it within four feet of me, arms outstretched, hissing like a pissed-off cobra. My first shot missed. Cursing, I backed up a few steps, centered my aim, and fired again. This time, it went down.

  Boots pounded the dirt behind me, growing closer. I looked over my shoulder to see Mike sprinting toward me, rifle slung across his back, a short, slotted metal fencepost in his hands. At the end of the post was a rough, heavy-looking cylinder of dirt-crusted concrete.

  Where the hell did he get that?

  As I watched, he angled toward one of the undead closing in on me, raised the improvised weapon, screwed his heels into the ground, and swung it like a baseball bat. The concrete cylinder burst the walker’s skull open like a ripe melon, bone and brain fragments flying in one direction while the corpse fell in another.

  “Caleb, come on!”

  I had stopped moving and was staring at the corpse, its skull shattered, brain tumbling out, dirt sticking to the shriveled tissue. A large, fat fly circled down and landed among the mess, its wings buzzing as it walked excitedly over its feast. My feet felt leaden, vision gray and black around the edges, mind blank, disconnected, a numb tingling creeping up my face. Something constricted my chest, making my breath come in short, stuttering gasps. Mike yelled again, and when I didn’t respond, he slapped me across the cheek hard enough to make my eyes water.

  “Wake up!”

  I did, blinking against the pain. “Son of a bitch.”

  He bent, picked up my rifle, and shoved it against my chest. “Take your gun, dammit.”

  I grabbed it and brought it to my shoulder, muscle memory putting my hands in the proper places.

  “Back to back,” Mike said. “We’ll shoot our way out of here.” He took a couple of seconds to raise the metal and concrete club over his head, take aim, and throw it like a
n axe. It spun end over end three times before striking a ghoul in the chest and knocking it to the ground. I heard ribs shatter from fifteen feet away.

  Shaking the last of the fuzziness from my head, I adjusted my VCOG to its 1x setting, aimed, and began firing. My breathing was even now, hands steady, the trembling in my legs gone. I let fly ten rounds in ten seconds and dropped ten ghouls. Behind me, I heard the shuck, snap, and clack of Mike reloading.

  We moved steadily toward the western field, keeping each other in our peripheral vision, checking our flanks and corners every few shots, dropping anything trying to angle in on us from the side. By the time I had burned through my first magazine, there were only fifteen or twenty walkers left standing. A minute later, they were all down.

  Mike and I stood among the once-human wreckage, bodies strewn around us, spray patterns of coagulated blood and brain tissue contrasting sharply with the pale dirt under our feet. We gripped our rifles and looked around dazedly, hardly believing what just happened.

  “We watched this place for a long time,” Mike said. “I saw nothing.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Not a stir, not a peep, not a damn thing. They came out of nowhere.”

  I looked at the stables and the fields beyond. “It’s like they were waiting for us.”

  Mike thought a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I talked to some of those soldiers from San Antonio. The things they told me are starting to make sense now.”

  “Like what?”

  “This one guy told me they don’t like sunlight, especially when it’s hot outside. Said if they can’t find food they look for shelter, or just kind of drop like they’re hibernating or something. Might explain why they’re more active at night.”

  I thought of the ghouls emerging from the field and stables, faces confused, swaying and turning circles as though punch drunk, angling their heads to vector in on me. There was no way they could have known we were headed this way—we didn’t know we were headed this way—and none of the undead’s behavior thus far indicated they were intelligent enough to plan an ambush.

  “I see your point. But it’s early morning, Mike. Why weren’t they out last night?”

  “Maybe nothing worth eating came along in a while.”

  “So you think they were sleeping?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I’m just telling you what the man said. Your guess is as good as mine.” He removed the half-spent mag from his carbine and replaced it with a full one. “Think we got ‘em all?”

  “Could be more in the fields. Crawlers.”

  “Have to keep an eye out.”

  I turned toward the Humvee. “Yes, we will.”

  *****

  It took us an hour to stack the bodies in one of the stables.

  That done, we used shovels liberated from the tool shed to scrape the leftover gore into small piles, which we then carted away in a wheelbarrow and dumped out of sight in the fields. Last, we made makeshift brooms with bundles of grass and erased both our tracks and those of the undead.

  From a distance, our location would look abandoned and undisturbed. But up close, the striations left by the grass stalks would be a dead giveaway. All we could do was hope the weather helped us out with a strong wind or an afternoon thunderstorm.

  After cleaning up, the three of us looked at each other, each one waiting for the others to speak. Finally, Mike said, “Well, anyone feel like sleeping in one of the stables?”

  Sophia and I said, in unison, “No.”

  We looked at each other and laughed. “Kind of seems like a lot of work for nothing, doesn’t it?” I said.

  Mike shrugged. “I’ve done a lot harder work for a lot dumber reasons. At least the next person who comes along won’t have to worry about those things.”

  “Walkers,” I said, more to myself than the others.

  “What?”

  I looked at Mike. “That’s what the soldiers called them. Walkers. Walking corpses, walking dead, you know. Like an abbreviation.”

  He turned his head toward the stable loaded with dead bodies. “Makes as much sense as anything, I suppose.”

  “Walkers, schmalkers,” Sophia said. “I’m tired. Let’s get out of here.”

  Mike and Sophia slept under the shade of a lodgepole pine near the Humvee, the engine making the occasional faint ticking as it finished cooling. I stayed close for a while, perched atop the wide vehicle, binoculars focused on the small ranch up the hill until it became clear no more infected were nearby. Thanking fate for small favors, I put my ghillie suit back on and conducted a slow, careful sweep of the surrounding area.

  I’m a firm believer people overuse the word ‘surreal’, often applying it to situations out of context with its definition, but that’s exactly what the next five hours were like. Surreal. No airplanes droned overhead, no cars buzzed along the highway, no voices drifted to me on the wind, nothing manmade. The only sound was a light breeze sighing through the dry brush and the rustling of sparse evergreen limbs. Sometimes a rodent or lizard skittered away at my approach, a bird took flight with a flap of feathered wings, or a door to one of the open stalls beat against its frame. Otherwise, I heard nothing.

  After a while, I realized that other than Mike and Sophia, I was probably the only living person for miles. All the sneaking and crawling and straining of ears began to feel silly. So I stood up in the middle of hundreds of acres of open terrain, made a pile of my gear, and removed my ghillie suit. Rolled it up. Tied it to my assault pack. Tilted my head back and closed my eyes to the sun.

  Orange spots raced across my vision, the amber glow of faraway nuclear fusion backlighting my eyelids. The wind ruffled my hair and flapped my collar against my neck, carrying the scents of warmth, dry grass, pinesap, and the faint, earthy undertone of decay. The field around me was a static crackling of brown stalks gently colliding in the breeze, dipping and rising like the surface of a lake, flashes of white reflected at a cloudless, azure sky.

  My eyes stung when I opened them, forcing me to blink to restore sight. When I could see without large, multi-colored spots obscuring half the world, I picked up my gear, finished my patrol, and headed back to camp.

  It was a refreshing, clear-minded peace I felt that morning, alone in that bright field. It was pure. Undiluted. An instant of hopeful clarity amidst a maelstrom of chaos and fear.

  No peace has found me since.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Two more days on the road brought us to the outskirts of Colorado Springs.

  The first day was downright boring. We set out at night, Mike and I taking turns driving, and after seven hours of dodging wrecks, abandoned vehicles, fallen trees, dead bodies, and a crashed single-engine airplane, we spotted a cluster of buildings. Drawing closer, I could see the buildings comprised one of those parasitic road towns that once earned a bleak subsistence siphoning money from tourists and passing travelers.

  Gas stations, chain restaurants, and a dry cleaner lined the road, while in the center of town was a squat strip mall, complete with coin laundry, coffee shop, nail salon, barber, used books, and the all-important grocery store. Looters had shattered the grocery store’s front window, leaving broken glass glittering in the parking lot. Looking past the entrance, I could see whoever trashed the place had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. Not much point in searching for leftovers. I glanced around to see if there were any cars nearby. A nineties-model Mercedes with flat tires was the only vehicle in sight.

  “How much you wanna bet there’s a maintenance ladder around back?” I asked.

  “No bet,” Mike said. He drove to the service entrance and followed a narrow strip of gravel behind the building. The lane widened into a flat loading area. Mike parked next to one of several service ladders.

  “Not much of a lock,” Mike said. A metal security grate covered the ladder, held shut by a cheap bronze padlock. I grabbed a crowbar from the back
of the Humvee and levered it off. While I worked, Sophia appeared with Mike’s tent and bedroll and kissed him on the cheek. “Sleep well, Dad,” she said. “See you this afternoon.”

  She grabbed my arm and started pulling me away. Mike said, “Where are you two going?”

  “We’ll be on the roof of that gas station over there,” she replied. “Keep your radio handy.”

  Mike looked like he was about argue, then let it go with a sigh, looking deflated. “Fine. Just keep it down over there. Don’t want to draw any infected.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  I kept my mouth shut and followed.

  While Sophia was settling in, I retrieved an empty five-gallon fuel can from the Humvee and checked the abandoned Mercedes’ tank. To my delight, not only was it a diesel, but there were just over four gallons left. I thought about how long it had been since the Outbreak and wondered how much longer it would be before what limited quantities of salvageable fuel were left lying around went bad. The prospect of walking to Colorado Springs appealed not at all.

  After stowing the fuel, I went back to Sophia and lay down with her in the tent. A simple kiss became two, then three, and the next thing I knew we were tearing each other’s clothes off, skin hot, hands exploring.

  There are few things more awkward than two people trying to undress one another in a pup tent, but somehow we managed. There was a lot of pulling and cursing and pauses to kiss whatever portion of skin one of us happened to expose on the other. Then came the clutching, and thrusting, and gasping, and heavy breathing, and Sophia’s white teeth biting down on her lower lip.

  We tried to be quiet. We really did.

  *****

  Later, as Sophia drifted to sleep next to me, I lay awake, ears straining.

  A few hours passed. I heard nothing but birds, insects, and the breathing sound of the wind against our tent. I thought about Mike on the other rooftop, alone, and wondered if he was thinking of his wife, and if so, was he remembering the good times, or the bad?