The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel

by James Cook

  “No. I’ll do it.”

  He nodded and patted me weakly on the knee. “Thanks, man. I’m glad it’s you. We had some good times these last few months, huh? We made a good team.”

  “Miguel, it’s been an honor,” I said. Then I raised the gun, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  I did not leave him for the infected.

  The manufacturer of his MOLLE vest had installed a handle on the back so a soldier’s comrades could pull him to safety if he was too wounded to walk. I gripped it and began tugging him across the floor, head bowed, teeth clamped shut. When I had to cross a window, I dropped to my side and pulled with one elbow on the ground. Outside, the infected drew closer, their moans pouring into the hallway like a flood.

  “Come on,” Tyrel hissed. “Move your ass.”

  I redoubled my efforts, drawing deep breaths and surging forward. Rojas was not very tall, but he was solidly built and heavy with muscle. My breathing soon became labored from the strain. Finally, I crossed under the last window and stood.

  I said, “Help me pick him up.”

  Tyrel gripped Rojas under the arms and laid him over my shoulder. I bounced a few times to balance the weight while Ty hastily locked the stairwell door.

  “Go on ahead,” I told him. “I”ll carry Rojas upstairs, you go lock the other stairwell.”

  Tyrel nodded once and pounded up the stairs. A few seconds later, I heard his footsteps over my head as he sprinted across the third floor hallway.

  The climb was not an easy one. The stairs were slick with blood and gore, the stench making breathing difficult. I focused on taking one step at a time, not thinking about the end goal, just the task immediately in front of me. Like that old joke:

  How do you eat an elephant?

  One bite at a time.

  I made each surge of thigh muscle and stiffening of back a mission unto itself. Plant the boot, lean forward, flex the core, push. Now repeat. Again. Again. Again. Finally, I reached the third floor landing and emerged into the hallway. The bodies of the men who attacked us were still there, still dead. I had not noticed it before, but a thin film of blood covered the floor from wall to wall. The cold had coagulated it, turning the pool into a thick, gooey mess. There was no way I was going to cross that while carrying Rojas without slipping, so I set him down gently.

  The door opened at the other end of the hall and Tyrel emerged. “All secure?” I asked.

  He nodded and came over to stare at Rojas. His face was blank, the piercing black eyes steady and intense. “We need to strip his gear.”

  Before the Outbreak, I would have been horrified at the suggestion. I would have stared angrily at Tyrel and asked him what the hell was wrong with him. But you do not survive the end of civilization by being sentimental. You do not survive by ignoring the reality of your situation. You survive by being able to turn off your emotions and do what is necessary, no matter how unpleasant. I may not have liked it, but Rojas’ gear was valuable. We could not afford to leave it.

  As I thought this, Tyrel said, “You know we have to leave him here, right?”

  I nodded slowly. “I know. We’ll never make the rendezvous in time if we take him with us. He’s too heavy.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You did the right thing.”

  “I know.”

  The hand left. “No man should have to kill himself when he has friends around.”

  I nodded, wondering what the future held for a world that viewed such grim sentiments as kindness.

  “That sniper is still out there.” I said. “He has to know by now his friends are all dead.”

  Tyrel looked toward the window. “Maybe he has more friends.”

  *****

  Night fell.

  The moans of the infected grew steadily louder as they converged on the schoolhouse. Hundreds of them packed the second floor until no more could fit. The late arrivals began squeezing together in the courtyard and other areas outside, and in less than an hour, they had packed themselves tight as sardines, standing room only, an undulating sea of grasping hands and twisted faces. There was no way we were getting out of the building until the cold immobilized them. In the meantime, we had to hope the heavy steel doors barring entry to the stairwells held up under the pressure.

  Making things worse, we had no way of knowing how long the sniper was going to wait for us. A military-trained sniper can remain in one spot for days without moving. But I doubted that would be the case this time. If the cold did not force him to move, the infected eventually would.

  When the sun was well behind the horizon, we put on our NVGs and moved into the hallway. The moon was still behind the mountains, making it pitch dark in the building. We laid out the empty duffel bags and filled them with the gunmen’s weapons, ammo, and equipment. Then, staying low, we dumped the bodies out the shattered windows. Even with my ears still ringing somewhat, I could hear the infected in the courtyard tearing into them.

  Rojas, we dragged into a classroom. After stripping him of his gear, I unrolled his sword, laid it on his chest with the blade pointed at his feet, and positioned his hands around the hilt. We said a few words over him, then covered him up with his jacket. I hated the thought of leaving him there, but he knew the risks when he agreed to come with us. In my place, he would have done the same thing.

  Our loot was seven serviceable rifles, three damaged ones we could strip for parts, nearly a thousand rounds of ammunition, five pistols of varying calibers, and the gunmen’s tactical vests and their contents. We even took their boots. A decent haul, but hardly worth a good man’s life.

  Staring at the black bags bulging with salvage, I was once again struck by the nature of the world I now lived in. Before the Outbreak, if we were caught with any of this stuff, we would have gone to prison. But now, no one would question where it came from. Abandoned military equipment could be found anywhere, making it impossible for anyone to say for certain where a particular item in a market stall came from. Bloody boots were barely worth batting an eye at. Bullet riddled tactical vests were sold at a discount, an additional ten percent off if you couldn’t wash out the stains. Throw in a box of 5.56 ammo, and it was worth a gallon of purified water and half a pound of venison jerky. Squeamishness has no place in the scarcity of the new barter economy.

  Later, we searched the rooms on our floor looking for something to use for bedding. We had cached our sleeping bags, along with the rest of our gear, on a hillside where they weren’t doing us a damn bit of good. If we wanted a decent night’s sleep, we would have to improvise.

  One of the doors we opened revealed a teacher’s break room, complete with two vinyl sofa’s, a blank television, and a vending machine. Neither of the sofas were big enough to sleep on, so we drew knives, cut out the padding, and laid it on the floor. My legs dangled over the edge from the knee down, but it was better than nothing.

  Most of the food in the vending machine was inedible, but at the bottom were two rows of little cans of Vienna wieners. We busted the glass and devoured them greedily, undeterred by the coagulated fatty goop they were immersed in. My father once told me you would be amazed what you will eat if you are hungry enough. As usual, he was right.

  Afterward, Tyrel said he would take the first watch. Too tired to argue, I gratefully lay down on my makeshift mattress, covered myself with my ghillie suit and a long wool jacket taken from one of the dead gunmen, and focused on clearing my head. Too much had happened that day. I needed time to process it, put it into perspective. But that would have to wait. Exhaustion had come calling, and it was not going to leave until I paid the rent.

  I watched Tyrel pull a chair up in front of the door, sit down, and lay his rifle across his lap. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll wake you up in four hours. Get some rest.”

  I closed my eyes and slept.

  *****

  In the halfway space between awake and asleep, I felt warmth on my face and heard the soun
d of boots with dirt in the treads grating over tile.

  Startled, I reached for Rojas’ pistol. I had placed it next to me before lying down, arranged so I would not fumble for it in the dark, the grip turned toward me, the top of the barrel pointing at my feet. All I had to do was lay a hand over it, and muscle memory would do the rest. But muscle memory is useless when a size twelve boot comes down and arrests your efforts.

  “Easy, Caleb. It’s me.”

  Tyrel’s voice. I blinked at the brilliant sunlight pouring in between the blinds. The boot took its weight off my hand.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sorry,” Tyrel said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  His silhouette sat down in front of the window. I blinked rapidly, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the light. “What time is it?”

  He held up his wrist. “Just after eight.”

  “What!”

  “Relax. I’ve been up all night.”

  I looked around, eyes toning down the glare to something manageable. The room was the same as I had seen it last night, stripped sofas pushed into the corner, shattered glass from the vending machine kicked against the wall. I sat up and looked at what Tyrel held in his lap.

  “Where did you get that?”

  He leaned forward, holding the object out so I could see it. It was a rifle, but not an ordinary one. There was no wood in the stock or foregrip, only composite plastic with shock absorbing springs in the butt plate. A Leupold scope sat atop a rail mounted over the barrel. It was bolt action, and, judging by the barrel, large caliber. A bloodstain covered the chamber, stock, and a section of Tyrel’s right sleeve. I knew immediately what I was looking at.

  Sniper rifle.

  “This is the weapon that killed Rojas,” Tyrel said.

  I went still. A quick examination of my old friend revealed ice on his Army surplus fatigues, dirt and pine needles stuck to the fabric, and dark face paint with unwashed brownish-red spatter staining his cheeks.

  “Ty, where have you been?”

  He laid the rifle across his legs and patted it as if I had not spoken. “Took me a while to find the piece of shit. Had to wait until you were asleep and the infected were frozen.”

  I stared, eyes finally adjusting to the light. There was some kind of sticky, rusty brown matter encrusted in Tyrel’s knuckles and matted in the hair on his fingers. My eyes moved to the Ka-Bar dagger on his vest, the stains on the sheath, the smudges on the handle. I said, “Ty, where did you go last night?”

  “Hunting. I went hunting.”

  The next question was obvious, so I didn’t bother asking it. We sat in the cold silence of the room, Tyrel’s fingers drumming on the rifle’s foregrip, until finally he said, “The Rot finally stopped crooning about 0100. Gave ‘em another hour just to be sure, then went down to check out the hallway where Rojas got shot. Found the slug in the wall; a .308, or maybe a .300 Win mag. By the size of the hole in the wall, it had to have come from less than 300 meters.” He shook his head. “Went straight through him, the poor bastard. Never had a chance. Round like that, at that range, doesn’t much matter where it hits you. Anyway, it gave me a good idea where the shot came from. Weren’t too many angles a sniper could have used, not with all the other buildings in the way. So I worked my way to the north side of town, used the buildings for cover. Took a while. Finally got to where I was pretty sure the shot came from and started searching with the night eye.”

  He patted the night vision scope on his carbine. “Spotted him on the third floor of an office building. Had a nice setup, rifle rest on top of a desk, nice comfortable chair to sit in.”

  His hand strayed to his Ka-Bar and touched the blood smudges. “Took me about half an hour to sneak up on him. Grabbed him from behind before he could do anything about it. Told him, ‘You killed my friend, you son of a bitch. Now you’re gonna die.’ Then slit his throat.”

  Tyrel made a cutting motion across the front of his neck. “You wanna hear some shit, though?”

  I did not like the look on Tyrel’s face. “What?”

  “It wasn’t a him. It was a her. The sniper was a woman.” He laid the rifle on the ground with shaking hands and stared at it. “Wouldn’t have changed anything, though. Even if I had known, I still would have done it.”

  The room was silent for a time. Birds welcomed the dawn outside, chirping and whistling back and forth, oblivious to the doings of man, alive or dead. The sun coming in through the window grew brighter until I felt warmth through the leg of my pants. I picked up the sniper rifle and said, “Tyrel, it’s warming up. We have to go.”

  He nodded and stood, hands balled into fists at his sides. “I still would have done it.”

  “Tyrel, we need to move.”

  He looked up, eyes bloodshot, marked underneath in shades of black, “But if I had known, I don’t think I would have cut her throat.”

  I studied the flint-sharp lines his face, half illuminated in gold, the other half in shadow, and wondered which one of us he was talking to.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The wagon was moving away from us.

  I drew my pistol and fired a single shot into the trees. Even from a hundred yards, I could see the driver jump. His initial reaction was to lay flat against the bench, snatch a rifle from the buckboard, and take aim in our direction. Tyrel and I both raised our hands and waved them over our heads.

  The driver’s face was bright red when he reached us. “What the hell is wrong with you two? There’s infected all over the place.”

  “Relax,” Tyrel said. “If they were close enough to be a problem, they’d have heard your wagon. You hear any moans?”

  The driver’s anger dimmed somewhat. “No. I guess I don’t.”

  “Then why don’t you hop down and help us with the bags?”

  “I ain’t no goddam porter,” the man said. “Move your own cargo.”

  “You just used a double negative,” I replied. “Which means you are, in fact, a porter. Now if you want any more business from us in the future, my friend, you’ll hop your ass down here and get to work. You might be cheap, but you’re not the only game in town.”

  He looked confused for a moment, shook his head, said something unpleasant, and set the brake.

  When we had left Woodland Park, we knew our bags of salvage were too heavy to carry more than a few hundred yards. We also knew it would not be long before the infected thawed out, so after retrieving our gear from where we had cached it in the hills, we liberated a tarp from an abandoned house and used sticks and paracord to improvise a sled. What followed was a long, difficult hike, and we were both exhausted by the time we reached the rendezvous.

  Overhead, clouds began to gather. Low, dark, gunmetal gray clouds born along on a high, speeding wind. On the slopes above us, snow blew down in swirling plumes, scattering on the surrounding pines and cedars. The wind funneled down into the valley, and by the time we finished loading the salvage, we had to cover our eyes against the stinging ice and lean forward to keep our footing.

  “We need to move,” the driver shouted over the howling noise. “Bad weather coming in.”

  No shit, detective. “Let’s go then,” I said.

  As we hurried back toward town, the horses tossed their heads and whinnied at the storm. The driver leaned over to Tyrel and asked, “Where’s that Mexican fella that was with you?”

  Tyrel set his jaw and shook his head.

  “What happened?”

  “None of your goddam business.”

  The driver looked offended. He started to say something else, but Tyrel turned his flat black-eyed glare toward him, and the driver snapped his mouth shut.

  The wind blew strong and cold on the way back to the Springs.

  *****

  The headquarters for the Colorado Springs Volunteer Militia Corps occupied the gutted remains of what had once been a big-box retail store.

  Outside was an empty parking lot, the cars abandoned there long since hauled away for scr
ap. On the inside, shelves and display stands had been cleared out and replaced with rows of desks, file cabinets, and locked storage containers. The containers covered two-thirds of the floor space and were where the militias kept the majority of their after-tax wealth.

  After putting our salvage in storage on the west side of town, Tyrel and I hired a carriage to drive us to headquarters to deliver the bad news about Rojas. When we arrived, LaGrange was at his desk, as usual. Sometimes I wondered if the man ever left the building when not on a mission. Maybe he slept and took his meals there and only went outside to use the latrine.

  He looked up when he heard us coming, his face its usual mask of barely concealed irritation. His eyes flicked back and forth between us.

  “I don’t like the looks on your fool-ass faces,” he said.

  Tyrel and I sat down in two of the three chairs facing him. He put down his pen and stared at us. “Well? What is it?”

  I looked at Tyrel, who nodded to me. “We ran into some trouble in Woodland Park,” I said, not meeting LaGrange’s eyes. “Rojas … he didn’t make it.”

  The irritation left LaGrange’s face. His cheeks sagged and the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen. “Shit. What happened, infected get him?”

  I shook my head. “No. Salvage hunters. Rogue group, never seen them before.”

  The sagging cheeks began to darken. “Where are they now?”

  “Dead,” Tyrel said. “We killed them.”

  “All of them?”

  Ty nodded.

  LaGrange heaved a sigh. “Any indication of where they came from?”

  “No,” Tyrel said. “We searched, but all they had were clothes and weapons. That was it.”

  No one spoke for a stretch, the noise of the other militias doing business around us a low din of voices and chairs scraping over concrete. LaGrange opened a desk drawer, removed two forms from a binder, and held them out to us. We took them, and he shoved a cup full of pens in our direction.