Nala spent the rest of the day moving westward along the road with her burden of goods. She moved slowly and was quick to run off into the forest whenever she thought she heard something or got a bad feeling. After the events of the past twenty-four hours, her trips into the forest were often. She only saw the dead moving about on two occasions that day and had no difficulty avoiding them. She was grateful that her luck had put her on a desolate mountain road and not south back towards Denver. She passed a restaurant and a couple private campgrounds, avoiding these due to the cars parked in their lots. She made a wide berth around anything that bore resemblance to humanity even though nothing moved within. She figured that if anything were moving, alive or dead, before those men came through, it wouldn’t be now.
The day wore on and the sun started drifting downwards, leaving scant moments of light left. A sign to the side of the road indicated that another campground was a half-mile ahead. She redoubled her pace, hoping to find something with walls, or at the very least, a roof to spend the night. As she came around a bend on the heavily wooded mountain road, she could see the flickering light of a large fire burning ahead to the left side of the road. Her heart sunk; she knew that she had caught up to the men.
As she stood in the middle of the roadway, the last of the day’s light melted away, leaving her alone in the darkness of a starless night. The only beacon in sight was that bonfire. Again, as she had the night prior, she chose to move to the opposite side of the road as the men. Within a few moments, she found herself scrambling on her knees and one good arm to get to the top of a steep rise that overlooked the area. Finally cresting the rise, she sat atop the steep mound, listening to the terrible sounds that drifted up from below. They were the same sounds as the night before.
Nala wanted to kill every last one of them, and knew she would do so without hesitation if she could. For the time being, they provided her with a bit of security. They were loud, very loud, and kept a fire going. She figured that one or both of these things would draw the zombies to them, rather than having them roam about in the darkness around her. This fact had saved her the night prior and she was sure that if any of the creatures were about in this desolate place tonight, that they would likewise be drawn to the noise of the men. She ate heartily from the bags of food she had taken from the Lodge, hoping to lighten her load a bit for the next day. Her arm ached from carrying thirty pounds worth of food and drink all day. With her stomach full, she fell asleep laying on the dense, scrubby grass that grew at higher elevations.
Nala awoke in the middle of the night when the sky opened up, drenching her with a freezing cold, late fall rain. The rest of the night she sat huddled into a ball shivering. She was too afraid to come down from her perch to look for shelter in the darkness. When the sky finally started to lighten, indicating the dawning of a new day, she scrambled down from the top of the mound. She didn’t want to be seen out in the open, atop an overlook. She scrambled fifty feet down the hill, moving under a rocky outcropping she spotted on the lee side of the slope. From her new vantage, she was still able to see the fire burning in front of the campground office as well as a man who was sitting on the covered porch regularly feeding the fire. It was mid-morning when she finally realized they weren’t leaving, probably due to the rain. She wanted to start a fire to take the chill out of her bones. Even with the new clothing from the Lodge, she was shivering in the cold downpour. She knew better than to risk it, though, understanding that if the men saw the smoke, they would investigate. The consequences of what would happen if she were found was not something she was willing to gamble with, no matter how cold and uncomfortable she was.
*
“Of course we are going to have to find some snowmobiles and sleds and such to do it, but think about it.” He let the idea linger for a moment. “No undead for miles, it’ll be freezing and windy, yeah, but without the dead to worry about, we can do it.”
Tim spread the atlas out on the floor and traced out the plan he was proposing.
“If we cross overland just south of Chatham-Kent, we will be well clear of Detroit, nowhere close to London, Ontario, nevermind Toronto, then straight north around the top of Michigan. If things seem okay, we could just cut straight across northern Michigan, but I’d only want to do that once we are north of Midland,” he finished, poking his finger at the map.
Tim was so excited by his plan and explaining it that it didn’t register that Laura, Luna, and the teenagers had drifted off to sleep. Jen had drifted away from the conversation and was peering out the front windows. He paused, giving Will an opportunity to speak.
“You guys ever been out on the lakes in the winter?” Will queried.
Both men shook their heads to the negative and Jen turned back to the conversation.
“It’s cold like you’ve never felt before. It can easily get down to -40 with blistering wind that will take the breath right out of you.” He paused, looking at the east coast natives. “There will be no shelter other than what we bring out there, nor heat.”
Will paused for a moment, but seeing that he had taken the wind out of Tim’s sails, he began speaking again.
“It’s a good idea, and with the cold spell we’ve had recently, Lake Erie might be frozen solid. The others don’t freeze completely, so we’d have to stick nearer to the shore.” Seeing Tim’s downcast look, he added, “I’m not trying to dissuade you from the plan, I just want you to know what we are in for. You all don’t get that kind of cold in southern New York, and well, I’d feel guilty if I didn’t say something to warn you, bringing the little ones and all.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Tim asked, hopeful that Will would have some ideas.
“Well, like I said, it is a good idea, solid in fact. It’ll get us through to Benoit without having to go near to any of the cities like you said, but these cheap hunter clothes aren’t going to cut it out there. We need to hit a performance shop. REI or EMS or something like that to get some adequate gear. Fully geared out. As long as we don’t get hit by a blizzard, we should be able to cross with little to no problems. But, like I said, the bigger lakes won’t be completely frozen, even Erie might not even be. That being said, it will shave days off our trip. I think we should do it.”
“Okay,” Tim said, examining the atlas to account for the unfrozen lakes. “Well then, maybe we should plan to cut across northern Michigan after we cross Erie, then.”
“What do you think, Bjorn?” Will asked.
“I’m game to try it. I'm not fond of the other ideas, to be honest. The highways around Chester were bad enough. I'd hate to see the massive amount of dead in and around the cities. As long as we can find the gear, I say we go for it.”
“How about you, Jen?” Tim asked, seeing her watching from the shadows.
“I fucking hate the cold,” she said, continuing after a moment. “But I hate those things more, I guess. I’m willing to give it a try, like Bjorn said, as long as we have the equipment we need.”
Jen retreated to her pile of blankets on the floor and settled down for the night. The three men buzzed with excited energy, thinking about the possibility of shaving hundreds of miles off their journey, as well as countless encounters with the undead, stops for fuel and shelter. Will started making a checklist of all the things he could think of that they would need, trying to be as thorough as possible, from cook stoves and fuel to arctic tents and bags. They filled in Laura and the teens with the idea, going over plans and hashing out responsibilities for preparation. Bjorn and Tim both asked many eager questions to Will, who answered to the best of his ability. He was by no means an outdoorsman, but he had absorbed a decent amount just by being around the people and harsh northern Wisconsin weather his whole life.
They all knew that they wouldn’t be able to gear up fully until they got closer to Lake Erie. There simply wasn’t enough room in the trailer and certainly not in the Jeep, but regardless, as they rode along all day, their eyes scoured the roads around the h
ighway for an outdoor shop to raid. Their spirits were high as they crawled through the deeper, lake effect snow of Western New York. They sang songs and played games throughout the morning. There was very little traffic on the roads, and since moving beyond Elmira, they had only needed to steer cautiously around stalled traffic on two occasions.
“Where are all the cars?” Laura asked, genuinely curious.
“They might have evacuated,” Tim responded, hopefully.
“More likely that they called an emergency, martial law or something. Ordered everyone to stay indoors,” Bjorn responded, staring blankly out of the windows.
By the exit signs, they could tell that, even with the crawling pace they were making, they might reach Lake Erie by early evening.
“I think we should head to Fredonia,” Will said, staring at the atlas.
“Why is that?” Tim asked absently.
He was leaning forward in the driver’s seat with his chin nearly touching the steering wheel. It required his total concentration to keep the Jeep on the white hump ahead that was the roadway.
“It’s a college town,” Will stated. “Where there are college kids there are camping gear shops. At least that is my best guess. Other places might only have hunting or ice-fishing-related gear.”
“That means risking going near a shopping area in a college town with how many thousand students?”
“Yeah,” Will called back, a bit quieter. “It’s definitely risky, but I think it may be our best bet for the gear we will need.”
Silence answered his last statement. After a few minutes, Will broke the silence again
“Well, if we want to go that way, we will need to get off the highway soon.”
“What does everyone think?” Tim asked, glancing briefly in the rear view mirror where Laura, Luna, and Sophie slept.
The teenagers shrugged in the far back, keeping quietly to themselves. Chris had her head snuggled into Nick’s neck.
“I think we gotta trust Will on this; he seems to know what we will need,” Bjorn called from directly behind him.
“Anyone else?” Tim asked after a moment of silence.
“Okay, Fredonia it is,” Tim called after no response came. “What exit?”
Will glanced down at the atlas, double-checking before he spoke.
“Exit 12, Jamestown. Guessing we will hit it within the hour.”
About forty-five minutes later, Jen, who took the next shift behind the wheel, steered the Jeep off I-86 onto the Exit 12 ramp. She stopped absently at the end of the ramp with her turn indicator on, drawing a round of snickers from the rest of the people in the car.
“No. Look,” she urged, nodding her head towards the south.
Looking south, everyone could now see a tremendous cloud of thick black smoke billowing up to merge with the cloud-cover overhead. Jen paused for a moment longer before guiding the Jeep with trailer in-tow into the northbound lane of Route 60. As they passed the burned-out crater that an illuminated road sign declared was the “Kwik-Fill,” Jen broke the quiet in the car.
“How long ‘til Fredonia? We only have a quarter tank, plus whatever is in the gas cans.”
Tim looked at the key on the atlas page and figured a rough estimate before answering.
“Only thirty miles or so. We should have plenty.”
*
It was later that evening, after a long day huddled under the rocky outcropping from the rain and the wind that Nala first heard the sound. She immediately snapped her attention, looking over the copse of densely packed trees and the road beyond it, to the building the men inhabited. She immediately recognized that the sound had come from much nearer, and off to her left. The sun had gone down an hour or so before, and although the clouds blotted out the light from the quarter moon, the total darkness of night had not yet pulled its veil over.
Nala shivered in the shadows with her arms pulled into the coat she had taken from the Lodge. A moment later, when the sound recurred, she recognized it as the sound of scree cascading down the hillside. She peered out from the outcropping nervously, but she was willing to ignore the sound after the first time it occurred, figuring the heavy rain had dislodged some rocks. The second time made her certain that something lurked nearby. Just off to the left of her were two zombies slowly ambling around the side of the slope towards her. The rain poured down off their grayish, blotchy skin, matting their hair down to their scalps. They were not bothered by the icy downpour whatsoever. Inexorably they came onward, slowly moving in her direction.
Nala started to panic, looking at her bag of food then her chain. What the fuck am I going to do with that? she thought. The act of having a weapon had reassured her, but now when she might need to fight, she was seeing just how useless she was, with only one arm and what amounted to a metal whip as a weapon. As the first zombie came around the side of the slope in sight of her, she charged, throwing her foot into its midsection, shoving the thing down the steep side of the hill. It loosed a new tumble of scree cascading down the slope as it tumbled, head over heels. It finally came to rest a hundred feet below at the base of a pine tree. She stepped out from under the outcropping, moving around the side of the hill, hoping to put some distance between her and the second thing as it came around the corner, reaching for her.
She ducked out of range of its reaching arms as the moaning corpse leaned in, lunging for her. She scrambled away, skirting around the slope. She cast a quick glance down at the one below, watching as it stood back up after its violent fall. As she watched, it began back toward the hillside, its gaze fixed on her. She was so distracted by the spectacle of the zombie’s approach that she wasn’t paying enough attention to her footfalls. Her foot hit a loose piece of shale. The rock slid out before she could catch herself and she fell awkwardly, landing heavily on her broken arm. A quick shocked scream followed by an anguished groan issued from her lips.
The slide of scree underfoot took her with it, tumbling end over end down the hill. She was able to react despite her agony and the chaos of the fall. She was able to steady and slow herself on top of the slide by spreading her legs and throwing her good arm behind her. The first thing she noticed, as the slide slowed, near the bottom, was the form of another body tumbling past. After a brief moment of confusion, she recognized that it was the zombie that had been pursuing her up top. The moaning thing cartwheeled, tumbling end over end before it came to rest, landing in a heap at the base of the hill. No sooner than it came to rest than it started to rise again as she slid down towards it.
Catching a glimpse of movement from her periphery, she glanced in time to see the man move purposefully from under the cover of the porch roof and start across the roadway. He was holding a rifle. The trees blocked her view of him as she continued her slide. Her heart sank. She came to a stop near the bottom of the hill, ten yards off from the zombie that tumbled down before her. The zombie was back on its feet and turning to face her, and a sidelong glance showed her that the other one had adjusted its course and was moving around a boulder fifteen feet away, advancing with a low moan.
Nala scrambled about in the loose shale and stone at the base of the slope, frantically trying to find a decent rock to arm herself with. Her good hand eventually settled on a six-inch diameter piece of shale. She scooped it up and scrambled into the cover of the forest as the two zombies moved within feet of her. She hoped to use the dense foliage to hide her from both the undead as well as the man that approached from the road. Her illusion of escape dissipated before she was twenty feet into the trees. Coming around the thick trunk of a pine tree, she was met by the flash of a rifle stock descending towards her head. It struck about two inches above her right eye, sending her snapping through dry dead branches as she slammed sidelong into the bole of a tree.
She lay there, stunned for an interminable amount of time, before awareness slowly came back to her. She heard a low moan. The fear that rippled through her at the sound brought her sitting upright, fully alert. Along with her se
nses came the awareness that the sound was issuing from her mouth, and not the dead that followed behind. She watched as the man leaned his rifle against a tree and advanced on her while unbuckling his belt. She grasped around desperately for the rock that was no longer in her hand.
*
The miles of snow covered landscape drifted past. Only the quiet chatter of Sophie and Luna playing with blocks on the floor broke the silence in the Jeep. None of the other occupants had ever seen this part of New York before and their attention was entirely focused out the windows to the pastoral character of it. Nineteenth century farmhouses lined the rural highway, popping up every few hundred yards. There were newer houses as well, appearing every now and again, on the land between the farmhouses, but the real charm lay in the rolling hills and pastures on either side of the road. The blanket of snow that lay atop everything tied the whole scene together. It was virtually flawless. Only the occasional undead shambling across an empty pasture marred the beauty.
The roads they traveled were covered in pristine snow. The very few signs of humanity they encountered went unexplored. It was more comforting to them not to ponder where the occasional footprints led, or on who left them. They passed an avenue labeled Airport Hill Industrial Park, which sent shivers up Tim, Bjorn, and Laura’s spines. It brought back thoughts of those first terrible days, of fleeing into the industrial park outside Chester. A week of hiding in terror followed, not knowing what was happening as the world they knew crumbled around them. It was a month later now, and they still didn’t know what was happening; they just did their best to survive and adapt to it.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 21