The next morning, we rolled out early, and reached our first prospective looting place about an hour later. We stopped on the last rise of the road, about a mile away from the town. Wright used to have a population of just under two thousand, and hopefully most of them were dead now. Permanently, not the temporary kind. I was well aware of just how morbid that sounded, but that was the new normal.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked Nate, drumming my fingers against the steering wheel.
“We could case the town. Approach slowly, find the best entry vector, clear possible exits first. Or…” He let that hang in the air between us, a hint of a smile making his eyes glint even through his wraparound sunglasses.
“Or we could just drive in, drive over any shambler in sight and gun down the rest until they stop coming,” I replied, feeling a grin tug up the corners of my mouth.
“And there you keep wondering why I’m putting up with you,” he snarked back.
Chuffing, I glanced back at the town in front of us as I replied. “Not wondering. I’m sure that by now I’m the only woman left in the world who can even aspire to meet your standards.”
Shaking his head as he chuckled, Nate disengaged the belt harness and slipped out, briefly talking to Burns and Andrej in the other two cars that we’d predestined as our advance. With five cars—two of them outfitted with larger cargo holds that made them potentially too valuable to destroy in a harebrained attack plan like this—it only made sense to work out a strategy—even if that strategy was barely more than a driving order so we wouldn’t end up careening into each other. That would just be stupid and inconvenient.
Three minutes later, Nate was back in his seat, giving me the “go” with a nod. Exhaling slowly, I gripped the wheel harder, disengaged the handbrake, and gunned the engine. The car surged forward, howling with similar glee as I felt. I should probably not have been that excited about driving over zombies and potentially totaling our car and killing us in the process, but there were so few joys left in the world.
Not bothering with sticking to the right lane as the road was clear and we didn’t exactly expect anyone to drive in the other direction, I sped the car into town, Burns closing in on my left while Andrej hung further back to my right. We’d plotted this formation—and I’d spent a good fifty hours learning to drive with the updated gear box and steering gimmicks that Martinez had outfitted the car with, and another hundred doing what Nate casually referred to as “more active driving,” which included more than just a few stunt driving moves, I was sure—and it was about time to put my new skills to the test.
Even before we blasted through the city limits at over fifty miles per hour, I saw the first few shamblers turn toward us. Not many, maybe ten or fifteen, but the town had clearly not seen any action since the plague hit it. That boded very well for our plans.
With no internet—and no one local who could point us toward the stores at hand—we were left to find our own way around, old school. That meant simply sticking to the road I was driving on until Nate called out for me to take a right turn, and I swerved into the other street without reducing the speed significantly. The left rear wheel went off the road, spitting gravel behind me as it found traction again, and off we went, right past a zombie that came galloping toward us. Another turn, and we were sailing into the mostly empty parking lot of what looked like a supermarket—jackpot. There were three shamblers up and about, all rearing up to or already running toward us. Instinct made me want to step on the brakes, reverse, and flee, but instead I kept right on. Just before I was about to hit the first one, I wrenched the wheel to the side hard, using the handbrake to force the car into a hard left drift. The reinforced back passenger side slammed right into the zombie with a loud crunch, throwing it toward one of the abandoned cars on the lot. From the corner of my eye I saw it crumble to the ground but it was still moving, trying to reach us by dragging itself forward with its one good arm. Letting the momentum bring the car to a halt, I slammed in reverse and went right over the zombie, the skull and hip bones breaking under the easily two tons of the car. Looking back through the rear window, one arm flung over the headrest of Nate’s seat, I was just in time to see Burns ram one of the remaining shamblers full-frontal, splattering gore all over the steel cage at the grill before going over the remains just like I had. That left the third zombie; yet before I could gear up to dispose of that, too, Nate wrenched open his door and fired across the lot, making me wince from the racket—and effectively taking care of the problem.
And then we waited for the remaining shamblers in the region to come to us so we could either gun them down or otherwise end their miserable existence with clubs and baseball bats. After all, why waste bullets when you could get in some good upper body workout instead?
Fifteen minutes later, the air was clear, the lot somewhat more gory than before, and we were gearing up to raid the store. Through the windows we saw a few more shamblers, locked inside and drawn magically to the noise, that still needed taking care of. Cho and Santos took point, reducing the locks to so much scrap metal with a shotgun blast.
Adrenaline was pumping through my veins as I stepped over the now inanimate corpses into the store, helping make sure that there weren’t any stragglers lurking behind. I’d learned the hard way that zombies could be sneaky fuckers, so before anyone turned their flashlights on the prospective loot, we made sure that we were the only thing moving inside.
The store hadn’t been raided, but it was far from well stocked. Days of what the news had tried to sell as an influenza outbreak had gotten people antsy to stock up on all the things that might be in short supply within a day or two. The stench of rotting corpses and what used to be fresh produce lay heavy in the air, and even after Pia smashed several of the windows, it didn’t get much better. The zombies had gnawed on all manners of things, also getting into the cereals and flour for whatever reason, but the cans had been left pretty much unscathed. We spent an ungodly amount of time with reading labels to make sure not to grab anything that might be contaminated, and didn’t pass up the animal chow section, either. While the guys were busy lugging palette after palette of what had been marked as good for consumption into the cars, I went through the other aisles, looking for more things to check off our lists. Cleaning supplies and tools were right up there, just below food, weapons, and ammo. With the first taken care of and the other two lacking completely, that left me lugging out soap and other knickknacks until my arms felt ready to fall off. Just before we left, we packed another two boxes off the book and magazine racks, cramming those into the last remaining space still left in our cargo holds. Turned out, spending a long winter locked in where you could do nothing whatsoever and most people had no electricity, that paperbacks and games were suddenly all the rage again. Oh, the irony.
There was no sense in looking anywhere else with no more place to stash anything, so we just drove around town twice until we’d found all the police cruisers and got the weapons, ammo, and usable gear—if available—from them while the other half of our people hit the bars to do the same—and stock up on hard liquor. Somehow, there was always room for another bottle of vodka.
Then we were off again, driving back to the meeting point in Meeteetse, reaching it just after nightfall now that we were a little more cocky because nothing had jumped us on the road. We’d agreed with Emma’s plan to use the bar as a headquarter to redistribute food and items—a safe place to gather, but far enough from our own bunker not to invite trouble.
Over the course of the following two weeks, we did five more runs like that, until we had gathered what felt like half a hardware store and enough cans to last the entirety of Wyoming until civilization was back on its feet, ready to relaunch the space program. By then, my ass had become accustomed to the car again, if not to Nate’s constant backseat driving gripes. After a long debate with the still forming neighborhood watch, we decided that we needed to hit a larger town, because weapons, ammo, and medical supplies w
ere still lacking. Riverton was one option, but we decided to go for Douglas instead. So I had another chance to maybe see the jackalope statue, after all. My excitement dulled somewhat with the prospect of how many zombies six thousand people could have yielded, or at least fed over the winter. They still preferred fresh meat to carrion, but Douglas sounded a little above our pay grade. Yet with demand strong, there wasn’t much else we could do—unless we wanted to leave half our own supplies behind, which was out of the question. So Operation Douglas was launched on what Emma insisted was the first Thursday in April, but could really have been just any day of spring.
Unlike with our previous loot runs, we planned this one a lot better. We even got a map and had people tell us where exactly we’d find any prospective targets like gun shops, pharmacies, the hospital, or the police station. This one we wouldn’t hit by car but on foot, trying to keep as low a profile as possible. I would have proposed to invite anyone to join us who was up for the challenge, but Nate didn’t even broach the subject. That made me wonder if he didn’t trust the others enough, but that sounded a little paranoid even for him. Then again, I had spent the entire winter learning how to shoot, sneak, and how best to react in dangerous situations; it made sense that we—as a team—had a much better chance of surviving this than a ragtag band of people who knew barely enough about guns to know which end to point where—Andrej’s assessment, not mine.
We spent the night before the hit in the no man’s grassland of Thunder Basin, huddled together for warmth, not daring to light a fire. As soon as dawn arrived, we made our way down to the outskirts of the town where we left our cars, ready to be stocked with whatever we could scavenge. In winter, when Martinez had outfitted all cars with a system that used the same keys for all of them, I’d laughed at the very idea of anyone actually stealing our rides. Now, I was a lot less amused by that idea. Sure, there would be cars aplenty all over Douglas, but likely few of them with a battery that would still start—and none that had been zombie proofed. If worse turned to worst, we could always hunker down in our fortresses on wheels and just wait until the undead fuckers lost interest. Seeing no less than twenty undead come out of the grasslands even five miles away from town—drawn by the sound of our engines—made me very glad about that.
Armed to the teeth and carrying backpacks that were too large for comfort—even empty—but just small enough not to be a true hindrance, we set out, first disabusing those shamblers of the idea that we were their ideal meal, then spreading out in the teams Pia had sorted us into. It came as no surprise that I was—once again—teamed up with Andrej, Burns, and Bates, and although I would have preferred to have Nate by my side, with just thirteen people and three entry vectors identified, it made no sense to set up our group as the fiver one. Pia’s group would hit the truck and auto repair shops to the south; Nate and Martinez were honing in on the hospital, care center, and what schools they passed; and our job was to clean out the two larger gun stores and the police station.
Just before we split up, I shared a lingering look with Nate that was packed with a lot more emotion than it probably should have been, making me hope that it wasn’t the last. Then we headed south while the rest swung to the east, planning to split up farther along the way.
With silence and stealth being key, there was a lot less joking going on between Burns and me than usual, with only the odd word exchanged when we had to stop and duck, or take care of a shambler. The last few days had been balmy already—not quite warm, but warm enough that we’d ditched the winter gear for the summer jackets, with the odd layer of fleece underneath. The sun was shining with not a cloud in the sky, making this the perfect weather to enjoy spring—if not for what lay ahead of us. When we’d first come to Wyoming last summer, we’d made a beeline through the state, avoiding all towns. So far, we’d only hit the small ones, and usually gotten away before most of the resident undead population could even become aware of us. But Douglas was the largest settlement we’d even come close to since we’d left Lexington back in May last year, leaving us at a complete loss of intel for how bad it would get in there. And the increasing number of shamblers that greeted us the closer we got to the city limits didn’t really bode that well for our undertaking.
It shouldn’t have taken us significantly longer than one and a half hours to make the five-mile distance to town, but we spent closer to two hours with all the sneaking we had to do—not easy on flat ground with nothing to hide behind. It quickly became apparent why so few people we’d met at the meetings were from larger towns—even now it was hard to get close, let alone bug out with your entire family in tow. At least there were buildings—of course—and trees around the closer we got, but it was still slow going. The longer it took us, the happier I was about the fact that we only had three destinations to hit. The others had up to seven.
The town had once, without a doubt, been a green jewel in the otherwise brown grassland, but the trees were pretty much the only thing left untouched. While the winter had been a hard one, it in no way accounted for the overall damage that was apparent even before we reached the first houses. Doors and windows had been busted, furniture and the dead dragged out. Of them only rags and surprisingly few bones remained. I crouched down at the third such heap that we found, a little grossed out by just how clean the remains were. We’d seen enough that had been gnawed on by coyotes and other critters, but as far as I could tell, those were all human tooth marks. It was as if after the initial kill and feasting on the body, there’d been several more rounds of predation, to the point where less than twenty percent of the skeleton was anywhere to be found, and that not left whole. They’d probably even sucked out the marrow where they could get to it.
The houses weren’t the only thing that looked basically trashed. Car windows had been smashed as well, doors torn off, hoods and hatches damaged to the point of leaving just a rusting heap of metal behind. So much for plan C to leave the city with cars that we got going along the way. In most of the cars we didn’t even see remains or old bloodstains. Someone—or rather, something—had simply destroyed them, venting anger and rage beyond what we’d encountered so far. The shamblers we’d seen around had been strong and healthy, but not aggressive enough to account for that.
The closer to the evenly populated areas we got, the worse the destruction was. Fences had been knocked down, mailboxes torn off, and the ground was unevenly littered with anything from pillows and clothes to bent tools and wooden slats.
“I’m having a really bad feeling about this,” Bates murmured after we crossed the second intersection, ducking behind what used to be a small garden shed.
“Shall we check one of the houses?” I suggested. When three pairs of eyes just looked at me, I shrugged. “To see if they’re squatting inside? Because I don’t want to get caught deeper in town, finding out that there’s a hidden sea of zombies between me and the exit.”
Andrej shrugged. “Pick one. We can still escape through the river. Haven’t seen any of them swim yet.” That ice-cold water, swelled by the melting snow, sounded like a good alternative was not something that alleviated my fears.
Nodding at the house on the same property as we were on already, I took point, running across the open lawn to flatten myself against the wood, waiting for the others to follow. As soon as Burns was there, I inched toward the next window, getting onto my tiptoes to peek inside. The destruction was even worse there, but, alas, no squatters. Sneaking forward, I kept checking windows until I reached the corner at the back of the house. There, we found what used to be garden furniture completely wrecked and partly deposited in the now dirty, greenish water of the pool, with a lump of something drifting in the middle. It took me a moment to realize that it must be the remains of a zombie that had fallen in and drowned. Or died of a more violent death. There was no way of telling now—months later—as it had been reduced to so much foul-smelling refuse.
The steps of the back porch stairs were splintered and partly destroyed, so
I heaved myself up over the low railing instead, touching down as softly as possible on the other side. Only Bates followed me, with Burns and Andrej taking on defensive positions on the lawn. The kitchen door was down in the pool so our entry wasn’t hindered by anything major.
Stepping inside, I immediately held my breath when a wave of decay washed over me. There were two bodies on the floor, both dead—permanently—and torn apart, but their bones not yet picked as clean as those from outside. Black smears of congealed blood were all across the hardwood floors, leaving a macabre tableau of a Rorschach test behind. I couldn’t say for sure how long they’d been rotting away there, but it was a lot less than ten months. I wasn’t sure how much snow there’d been around here, but the fact that there was blood probably meant that they’d found their end in the last two weeks.
There was absolutely nothing of interest in the room beside that, so after making sure that nothing was hiding anywhere, I stepped into the hallway and on into what used to be the den. The room was in an even worse condition, the sofa reduced to what looked oddly like a nest. And the stench was beyond comparison.
Coughing, I quickly wrenched up my scarf over my mouth and nose, but I felt my eyes water nonetheless. Never in my entire life had I been subjected to anything like that. And it wasn’t just the reek, but also what it was coming from, that made me want to hurl.
“What the hell is this?” Bates murmured between noises that sounded awfully like gagging.
Looking at what he was nudging with the very tip of his boot, I couldn’t help but shiver.
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