Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter

by Mongelli, Arthur

  A thought struck him, and he paused just long enough to grab an armload of coats from the coat-tree before he ran up the stairs as lightly and quietly as possible. Even with his efforts, a few of the steps squealed and groaned under his weight. One step in particular, about two-thirds of the way up the flight, shrieked loudly, causing him to wince. When a new volley of roars echoed through the house, he gave up the idea of stealth altogether and ran up the remaining steps in full flight.

  *

  The inside of Tar’s shoulder burned with a sharp intensity that could only compare with that of a dental drill. He flopped onto his right side in the dirt and looked cautiously in the direction of the encampment. He could see the backs of a few remaining attackers moving out of the firelight, away from him and Donner. He breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that the men were not coming to finish him off. It was in that moment that the moans of the undead sounded uncomfortably close to his left. He scrambled back to his feet, as quickly as his aching bones would allow and moved quickly away from the sounds of the dead, back toward the encampment. In a dozen strides, he was standing back at the drainage ditch at the edge of the road, the sounds of pursuit issued from just behind. He coiled his legs up underneath him and sprung out of the ditch onto the roadway just out of the reach of one of the undead. He scrambled on his back away from the edge of the road, giving himself a moment to assess his situation. The thing was slow, and as he watched, was joined by a few more, that staggered out of the dark forest.

  For the first time, he thought about the after-effects of the prolonged gunfight, and realized that the dead would be converging on Donner for many miles around. He was afraid if he shot these undead that he would draw many more. After a moment, he realized that if they heard the gunfire, Grayson’s men might come back to finish him. By the time the first of the dead managed to climb atop the roadway, Tar was a hundred yards further down the road. He figured that he’d best cut his losses and get Linda to check his shoulder out. He hazarded one look back at the enemy encampment, a look that caused him to pause. Grayson’s body was gone.

  Almost two hours later, just past three in the morning, Tar stepped through the doors of the Heartland clinic. He had spent the previous hour and a half walking across the battlefield with Harold looking for survivors. Tar didn’t hesitate for a moment; he put a bullet in the head of any of Grayson’s men that didn’t have the brains or ability to flee from the scene. He knew that Linda had a heart, but he would not let any of the town’s resources, not medical supplies and not food, be wasted on those bastards. He was so enraged at their losses that might have used his knife and not have wasted the bullets at all if he were not shot himself.

  Silvie Showalter, one of the RNs, shrieked at first, then rushed over to him as he staggered through the doors of the clinic. Between the blood-soaked shirt he was wearing and his exhausted gait, she had taken him as one of the dead at first glance.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as she started unbuttoning his collared shirt.

  “Just rip it, it's ruined anyhow,” he growled back at her.

  The pain at this point had dulled in intensity, but the muscles continued to ache and felt like they had been shredded. Any movement other than breathing aggravated it. He was in foul spirits. Eighteen residents of Donner had died in the gunfight and another four were touch and go in the clinic with twenty-six more wounded. Silvie ushered him into the triage area and sat him in a heavy wooden chair next to the nurse’s station. He could see clearly that they were busy. Linda rushed from one bay to the next, not bothering to change her blood-soaked gloves as she moved. She was screaming directions at anyone present whether medically trained or not. The minutes he spent waiting turned into an hour as the warmth started to return to his body. Eventually, the stress of the night got the best of him and he drifted off to sleep.

  Tar awoke to a shot of pain in his shoulder, only to find Silvie tying a bandage around his wound. He sleepily watched as she then tied another bandage around his chest, tugging the arm in close to his chest to immobilize it. Looking around, he could see the triage area was calm and quiet, only one of the beds was occupied. Mervin, the general purpose handyman, janitor, and groundskeeper was pushing piles of bloody bandages and bandage wrappers around the area with a wide-headed broom.

  “Sorry!” Silvie called to him apologetically, as she cinched the knot.

  “No matter,” Tar grumbled back at her. “All done for the night?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Henson finished stitching you up a few minutes ago and went to her office to get some sleep.”

  “How did…?” Tar hesitated.

  “Two died, Jon Stevens and Ray Williams,” she said, referring to the men who had taken gunshots to their stomachs. “Everyone else is stable and most are sleeping.”

  Tar nodded and closed his eyes, drifting back to sleep once again.

  *

  As Tim reached the landing atop of the flight of stairs, the sounds of the dead moving up the stairs behind him crowded his sense. He tensed as a hand from the left grabbed him roughly, pulling him through an open door. He immediately recognized that it was Bjorn as the man pulled him onto the attic staircase behind the door. Bjorn pulled the door shut quietly, twisting a skeleton key in two full circles to lock it. Tim looked up to see Will seated above him, sliding himself backward up the stairs, pushing his weight up step by step with his one good leg. A burst of noise froze them all in place. Some of the undead had reached the top of the stairs and were lurking about, seeking some sign of where their quarry might have gone. Tim held his breath, afraid even to breathe, standing just inside the door. Bjorn slowly brought his M4 off his shoulder and tried to get it at the ready in the cramped area. Minutes ticked by, the floorboards outside the door creaked occasionally as the undead moved about in outside.

  Little Luna let out a plaintive cry, wriggling her mouth free of Laura’s grasp before she could be silenced. A violent blast shook the hardwood door as one, at first, then many of the undead things threw themselves at the thin hardwood barrier. Bjorn, standing at the bottom of the stairs, pressed his entire weight against the door. He watched helplessly as the wide plank trim start to push inwards. The force of the things started overpowering the hundreds of years-old wood and nails that held the jamb in place.

  Will finished crawling to the top of the steps and turned to see the panicked look on Bjorn’s face as he struggled, pushing with his back on the door with all his might. Tim roared up the short flight of steps, swinging his M4 and bringing it around to bear. Panic swept through him, and his heart sank into the pit of his stomach, suddenly very afraid. How many shots do I have left? he thought desperately Two? Three? The reality of just how desperate their situation was at this moment was fully settling in. He was determined to kill every last one of them so that his wife and child could live, no matter what it cost him. He was a little angry when Will’s hand reached up and grasped the upper receiver of his rifle, pulling it free from his grasp.

  “Dammit, Tim, throw boxes down there!”

  Tim blinked for a moment, clearing his head of the grim determination, until he understood where Will was headed with the statement. He shook the cobwebs out of his head and set to work immediately, tossing and sliding boxes over the lip of the walk-up attic and down to the door below. In a matter of twenty seconds, he had sent twenty boxes and storage bins down. Bjorn was shifting them around as much as he could with one leg, while bracing his back against the door with the other. Will, with Tim’s M4 in hand, sat at the top of the stairs and had a bead drawn on the door whereabouts he thought the head of the first undead might appear to him if they managed to break through.

  Tim spotted a headboard from an ancient-looking cast iron bed and dragged the monstrosity out from behind a stack of boxes. He dragged it across the raw wooden floorboards, tearing deep gouges in the wood as he went. He was barely able to wrestle the thing down to the door without losing control and sending it tumbling down to Bjorn. Finally, it was down,
and the two were able to position it to brace the door, with one end resting against a stair riser and the other nestled perfectly atop the doorknob. Hesitantly, he and Bjorn backed away, their hearts pounding loudly in their chests. They regrouped at the top of the steps, quietly checking their ammo supply as the undead below rained heavy blows on the door.

  After a tense moment of silence, Laura, now nursing the noisy child, moved to one of the dormer windows. She peered out for a moment before moving to the next, all the while scanning the boxes around her. At the next one, she wrestled with the pane with her free hand for a minute before she was able to get it open. She readjusted her grip on the child and without a word to the rest, she started launching whatever detritus she could get her free hand on out of the window to the porch rooftop below. A couple minutes went by with the rest of the group watching Laura curiously. Gradually, the pounding on the door lessened, then stopped altogether as the things moved off in search of whatever was causing the new sound.

  “Is it sound that drives them?” Jen asked, intrigued by the development.

  All of them stood stock still for a few more minutes before moving, not wanting to risk a floorboard creaking or even a whisper that could alert the dead. Thankfully, it was a walk-up, so they had plenty of room to move about, and when they did so, they did their best to be silent. Laura pulled the chain on a dangling light, casting the room in a dull yellowish light, making shadows appear beyond every stack of boxes around. She started rummaging through boxes and baskets of yarn and fabric until she found what she was looking for. A moment later, she was hacking her hair off in great chunks with a black-handled pair of solid metal fabric shears. Five minutes later, she threw the offending shears across the attic, leaving her butchered hair irregular and patchy, but short enough that nothing could get a grip on it.

  Tim watched her with great interest, making sure she hadn’t lost her sanity before moving to the pile of coats he’d brought up with him. He passed around the coats he had scooped up and helped Will get comfortable atop a pile of moth-eaten clothing. After retrieving his rifle, he and Bjorn set about reallocating the remaining M4 ammunition. The ammo cans were still sitting on the cardboard sled out back, leaving them with a total of eighteen rounds that they split between them. The seven spent the remainder of the day huddled in the gloom and dust of a strange attic. Intermittently, they would move to the windows to scan the grounds around the house as well as the horizon. Scattered undead converged on the house from all directions, literally coming out of the woodwork. Smoke still billowed skywards from the direction of the highway. From what they could tell, the house they were in was on a narrow road. They could see a few other houses scattered about, but nothing that resembled a town, nor anything that offered hope. The snow continued on through the night. They found a few afghans, blankets, and quilts stuffed into clear plastic, zippered bags that they were able to gather about them to help stave the cold off.

  All of them to a man were completely dispirited when the early morning light crept up from the east. They were cold and tired and their situation was getting more dire by the minute as the undead continued to filter through the area towards the house. They had no food with which to eat, so instead, they stay huddled in whatever covers they slept under. Tim, Laura, and Luna congregated around the eastern window, trying to enjoy the little sunlight that filtered through the overcast sky. Will and Jen sat together looking out the west window, back towards the highway and the smoke that billowed up from it. Their minds getting drifting to other times, lost in the puffs of smoke that gently flowed up, blending with the ashen sky. Jen slid her hand into Will’s, drawing a surprised look from him. She ignored his glance and curled her body into his armpit as she pushed the thoughts of death and undeath aside and watched the snow fall.

  All of them were startled from their own private miseries when a blast of iron on wood erupted from behind. Turning, they could see Bjorn brandishing the side-rail from the cast iron bed. Realizing that there was no immediate threat, they watched as he lifted the rail high over his head and brought it down with all the force he could muster, like a railroad worker driving home a sledge, the bar hit the floor, sending scraps of wooden shrapnel flying around the room.

  “Bjorn!” Tim hissed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  *

  Christine felt at home in the cold on the roof of the cafeteria. She had spent many nights on the rooftop outside her bedroom window in her parent’s home, regardless of season, when her parents were fighting, which was often. Her parents had met young and got pregnant young and weren’t prepared for life to hit them full in the face. Her father worked picking orders for the lumberyard, having dropped out of school to provide for his unexpected family. Her mother was a sweet woman and always did well by the kids, but there was never enough money to do the things she wanted to do for them. It was this desperation for money that lay the roots for most of their marital spats. Her father stayed at the lumberyard due to the options his lack of formal education provided and her mother couldn’t find a job that allowed her a schedule to raise her children as well, especially after her little sister and brother were born.

  Christine sat on the rooftop of the cafeteria in melancholy, reflecting on those moments. She thought about her family, hoping they were safe. Deep down she knew they weren’t, and below in the kitchen, she did her best to push aside the thoughts. Her mother would never leave her children in a lurch, and the fact that she had been in a lurch for a week, spoke volumes. Rooftops had always her ‘alone’ place, where she could venture to when she didn’t want to be found. It was here on the school rooftop, alone in her misery, heartbroken for her mother and siblings, that she finally let herself go and grieve openly for herself, as well as the family she knew she would never see again. The freezing rain dripping off her hair and down her back snapped her back to reality just long enough to appreciate the sight of the undead moving towards the school. She watched as they converged from all directions on the cafeteria, she assumed, drawn by her heaving sobs.

  Her body was chilled to the core from her hours atop the roof. Deflated by the sight of the undead converging on her, she finally retreated from the roof, wriggling back down the shaft to the kitchen below.

  “Could you see anything? Could you hear sirens or anything?” Nick was calling up at her before she was halfway down the short shaft.

  “No, nothing, only thing I saw was freezing mist and more of those things,” she said after an overly long hesitation.

  She knew that he would be crestfallen at the news and she only told him the truth so as not to delude him about the reality of their situation. The hope fell from his eyes and he turned back to the etching he had been working on, carving a mountain-scape on the side of the stainless steel sinks with a kitchen knife.

  The following days blended into a week, or more. They lost touch with the passing of time, both disinterested by the notion of keeping track as well as their own relationship building as they grew closer and closer as the days moved on. They sought comfort from one another, some kind of physical human connection to stave away the terror and desperation of their situation. They spent the nights in each other’s arms. Nick moved quickly past the awkwardness he felt about his body. He was a teenage boy and spent roughly half his day with an erection of some degree; she either didn’t care, or didn’t notice. Their relationship soon grew intimate. The passion they found for one another helped each other through their fears, as well as overcome the grief for their loved ones, and their own fate. They were both sure their families were dead. The world outside of that kitchen and rooftop ceased to exist as their puppy-love overwhelmed the reality of the outside world. Over time, they both almost came to dread getting rescued, wanting to stay there together for the rest of their days.

  “I almost hope, in some moments, that no one comes,” Nick said softly into her ear one night.

  “Me too,” she replied, turning to kiss him softly. “But we can’t survive here forev
er. Eventually, the gas or water is going to run out.”

  The wounds on his feet had healed rapidly, with all but the deepest scabs falling off, leaving shiny, bright pink skin behind. With a pair of shoes Chris had crafted him out of some corrugated cardboard and twine, he was finally able to venture to the rooftop himself. Every day, three times a day for at least fifteen minutes, he made it a habit to stay on the roof and listen and look for signs of help. He did his best to follow the routine, though, as the blustery weather of winter set in, it grew more and more difficult.

  Although they reveled in the romantic idea of spending the rest of eternity in that kitchen together, they both knew that if an opportunity presented itself, they needed to escape. He decided that if this were a major disaster, that they probably would have to make their presence known rather than wait blindly for help to find them. In preparation for sighting people, he hauled up a covered pot of broken broom fragments and cooking oil to light and act as a signal fire on the roof.

  A few days later, a storm rolled in. It was the first real snow of the season, boding a long winter ahead. The two climbed easily to the roof, both of them were now accustomed to the ascent after having climbed it dozens of times. Nick turned away while Chris used their makeshift facilities. They now made a habit of using the rooftop as their bathroom, at least for solids. This provided for a much nicer smelling living arrangement below. They had originally used the empty sink for urine, but had shifted to the floor drain after the sink drain had frozen and backed up. They used a huge pot they kept in the walk-in freezer for solids to try to keep the smell down. They both bore the scars of the frozen pot on their thighs; it stuck to the skin after just a few moments and had to be ripped off painfully once their business was concluded. Now, it was a pickle bucket on the roof that Chris sat on as Nick scanned the roadways leading down into town and the highway that stretched off to the horizon behind the school.