For Bjorn, these memories struck incredibly hard. They brought the death of his wife, Lilly, and their son, Liam, to the forefront of his mind. He turned his head facing straight out the window as he cried, hoping no one, especially Sophie, would see him. The memories brought back the way his wife smelled, lightly of talc and lavender. That smell projected his mind back to their summers in Delaware, to holding hands on the beach at sunset and to the love they shared. The knowledge that would never see them again was bad enough, but what was worse to him, was the knowledge that they were not even at rest. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to put them down, nor had he allowed anyone else to do it. It horrified him to think that somewhere in Orange County, New York, roamed the undead versions of his family, ready to devour anything that crossed their paths. These thoughts tore open the wounds, and in the depths of his despair, he briefly considered leaving the group so he could go back and give his wife and child peace. It was only Sophie, his daughter, that kept him going these days, but in moments of weakness and depression, it was almost not enough. Almost.
“What are we doing as far as a place to rest for the night is concerned?” Laura asked from the back seat.
It was early in the afternoon and they still had a couple hours of daylight left, but experience had taught them to always keep an eye open for a safe place to rest. The pressures that the shortening days placed on them were something both new and urgent. They avoided night time travel as visibility was lower and the risks involved in any incident were greater. If they broke down or had an accident, they would be at the mercy of the elements and chance, something no one was willing to risk. At least in the daytime, they could see the undead moving about and had numerous sets of eyes scanning for danger. They could stop and rest in the Jeep as they had before, but if they wanted actual sleep rather than a place to while the nighttime hours away, they would have to find a structure to occupy. It was part of the new order of life that they lived
“Good point. I guess we should rest tonight out here in the sticks, and then tackle the task of finding gear with a full day ahead of us,” Will said.
Nods from around the Jeep sent seven sets of eyes scouring the landscape for a suitably safe place to spend the night. After a few minutes, Jen spotted something and steered the Jeep off the road to the left, pulling up a hill before stopping abruptly. They sat in between a vinyl-sided Victorian house and a large barn that had been converted into a garage with three bays, the weather vane still mounted atop its vaulted peak. There were numerous vehicles scattered about the property, including a few work trucks. Everyone in the vehicle froze stock with their mouths agape as a man turned and dropped the firewood he was carrying. His eyes went wide with fear and surprise and he grabbed furiously for something near his hip.
“Fuck!” Bjorn said, jumping out of the passenger’s side rear door, swinging his M4 to bear, while advancing on the man.
“Oh, shit! What’s he doing?” Jen called, ripping her seatbelt off and grabbed the hunting rifle she had practiced with.
In the span of five seconds, Bjorn had crossed the gap and stood ten feet from the man, aiming the assault rifle at the center of his chest. Jen, Tim, and Nick all stood just outside the Jeep with rifles aimed.
“D-d-don’t shoot, p-please!” the man begged, holding his hands palms out towards them.
Bjorn looked him up and down before answering. The man was in his late twenties, wearing coveralls tied around his waist, a stained T-shirt, and a grease covered baseball cap whose insignia long ago disappeared under the grime. Thick rimmed bifocal lenses made his eyes appear abnormally large.
“Left your gun in the house? Not too smart,” Bjorn called back at the man. “What were you going to do with that gun I wonder…”
“Nothing, man, I swear. Y’all just scared the bejeezus out of me.” He looked at the group. “Where y’all comin’ from?”
Bjorn lowered the rifle a bit, still aimed at the man, but his bifocals and his simple demeanor made him seem a bit less threatening.
“Headed into Fredonia. There a lot of survivors around here?”
“No. Well, I ain’t seen none, but I haven’t ventured out much as you can probably imagine.”
“Who else is in the house?”
Bjorn saw the man’s eyes narrow at the question, lighting a spark of mistrust and curiosity in his heart. The man composed himself quickly, but Bjorn was determined that he would find out. The man’s reaction begged too many questions that he needed the answers to.
“No one. Just me and Otis, the shop dog,” the man, said nodding in the direction of the garage.
“Well, let’s go over and meet everybody then,” Bjorn said unflinchingly.
*
Her eyes drifted past the man’s elbow as he started shifting his pants down off his hips. The first of the zombies came around a tree and into the small clearing. The man saw her eyes dart and spun nervously. He brought his pistol from its holster hanging from the belt of his pants up to bear as the thing closed the last few feet. Nala’s hand on her good arm closed around a limb of the tree that had broken off when she had fallen. Without a thought or a moment’s hesitation, she leapt forward towards the man, swinging down with all her might. The two foot gnarled and knotted limb crashed onto the top of the man’s hand that held the pistol. The weapon discharged as it flew from his grip. The man’s hand snapped back, striking her just above her left eye, sending her reeling back under the limbs of the tree. His head snapped around, and the look he cast at her was accusatory, replaced a moment later by abject terror as the zombie’s hands slipped around him. Its mouth closed around the flesh where his shoulder met his neck. He started screaming in agony as the second creature came into the clearing.
Nala crawled out from under the boughs and collected both the pistol and rifle, awkwardly juggling the two with her one usable hand as she backed away into the trees. She moved away from the scene cautiously, not taking her eyes off the zombies. The second creature almost looked confused for a moment as she backed away, as if it were unsure whether to partake in dining on the screaming man or pursue her. As she drifted backwards into the patch of evergreen trees, she watched it kneel down next to the other. Newly intensified screams came from the man as the second joined in. Finally, satisfied that the dead would not pursue, she slung the rifle on her good shoulder, tucked the pistol into the waistband of her pants and moved off, back towards the slope.
The sound of a screen door slamming open came from far behind her as she bolted back towards the hill. Voices yelling for “Wade” came from behind as she scrambled back up the rise. She abandoned the rifle about halfway up, more concerned with escaping the men than she was with readjusting the strap every time it fell from her shoulder. It wasn’t until later on that she realized that with one hand, she would be nearly useless with a rifle anyway. She was glad to have deprived the remaining men of the weapon at the very least. Finally back under the sheltering cover of the outcropping, she gathered her wits about her and got her breathing back under control. She shivered uncontrollably and watched as the men’s flashlights started scanning about in the woods below. After a few minutes, a series of gunshots rang out, indicating to her they had found Wade and the zombies feasting on him. She heard voices drifting up to her through the sound of the rain but couldn’t make out the words at this distance. After a few minutes, the flashlights showed her that the group of men were moving back towards the office structure. Nala was able to breathe freely and deeply, satisfied that Wade’s missing weapons hadn’t been noticed.
She awoke later that night to a full moon over her head, the rain had stopped and the lack of clouds in the clear, star-lined sky, sucked all the remaining heat from the air. She spent the rest of the night shivering and rubbing her body trying to keep warm. With the morning light came the sounds of the men spilling out from the office. They returned to the woods across the street. Nala, fearing the worst, slipped out from her shelter, moving carefully around the backside
of the hill, keeping the woods just barely in sight. It was then that she noticed the discarded rifle lying halfway up the slope. Its black sheen stood out boldly against the sandy-colored scree it lay atop. She started to panic; if they saw the rifle, they would know someone was about. Her nervousness brought on the need to pee and she worked her pants down, relieving herself where she hid. By the time she got her pants back up and buttoned, the sounds of motorcycles roaring to life split the air. The men toweled down the seats of the motorcycles and mounted them. They roared off westward after a few moments, leaving one motorcycle behind. Wade’s she assumed, as she half-walked, half-slid down the slope back towards the road an hour later, long after the thundering of the motorcycles faded into the distance.
She slipped into the office a few minutes later with only one thing on her mind. She ignored the middle-aged woman lying dead in the corner of the room, ignored the rest of the scene of violence around her until her eyes came to rest on a pile of discarded clothing on the floor. She painfully stripped off her sopping wet clothing off, until she stood naked and shivering in the middle of the room. She ignored the underwear and pulled on a warm pair of red sweat pants. She stripped the belt off her old clothes and loosened it for use as a replacement for the soaked and worn sweater she had been using as a sling. She awkwardly and painfully tied the drawstrings on the much-too-large pants tight around her waist and even went so far as to take the deceased woman’s running shoes to replace the sopping wet flats she wore for driving.
In a matter of twenty minutes, she was fully dressed in dry, warm clothes. She replaced the plastic bags that carried the food with the woman’s large purse. Slinging it over her head so that it hung below her arm on her good shoulder, with the pistol easily accessible, poking out of a side pocket. She considered her next course of action as she pulled the coat back on over the top her new outfit. She refused to stay here; the corpse made her uneasy. She was concerned the men might return if it started raining again or they didn’t find anything more suitable.
She heard a sound from outside and her imagination ran wild. She imagined it was a group of zombies shuffling about, or worse, the thought of it being the noise of a returning motorcycle.
*
“I got food on the burner. Let me run in and take it off before the house catches fire,” the nervous man said and started to move quickly towards the house.
Bjorn shouldered the rifle and fired a shot off to the right of the man’s ear, close enough that the man heard the buzz from it before he threw himself to the ground, coming up with his hands in the air.
“Alright, alright,” he muttered, moving slowly back towards the Jeep.
“You know what?” Bjorn said, the pit in his stomach widened at the man’s suspicious behavior. “I don’t want you to meet my friends. I want you to lay down on your face, right now.”
The tone in his voice conveyed a deep understanding to the man, the ramifications of not doing so. The man went down to his knees and lowered himself onto the snow, keeping his arms outwards. Bjorn waved the others over, bringing Jen and Nick to his side. Tim was unnerved by the events unfolding and wouldn’t leave his family unarmed and unattended. Instead, he climbed back into the Jeep with his wife and the kids, closed all the doors and locked them before standing up, with his upper body protruding through the moon roof. He watched the scene unfold from there, scanning the area with his M4 at the ready.
“Please search him, Jen,” Bjorn said as the two joined him standing over the man.
She passed her rifle to Nick and started patting the filthy man down, moving from his shoulders, down to his waist on back, then sides. She reached under him through the snow to his front. As her hands moved past his chest, he whispered to her.
“Make sure you grab a nice handful down there, sweetie,” he said softly, so that only she could hear.
Jen stood and kicked the man in the face. When he covered up, she stomped on his head again and again.
“You filthy, vulgar piece of shit,” she yelled at him as she stomped. “Bjorn, you or Nick needs to finish checking him.”
Jen walked away, pacing in anger. It wasn’t the comment that had pissed her off so much. She was used it being from Jersey. As a teenager, she had spent her summers at her aunt’s house on the shore and had grown accustomed to getting creeped on by guys twice her age. After everything she had been through, after surviving the undead that were ravaging the planet when most everyone else died. After killing undead by the score, being forced to do terrifying and terrible things, looting and moving, being shot at and freezing her ass off. What sent her over the edge was the idea that in the eyes of this creep, none of that mattered; to him she was still nothing more than a piece of ass.
As she paced about the driveway at the side of the Jeep, she started getting herself worked up about his statement. She raged about how unfair it was, knowing that somewhere in this devastated country, with society coming apart at the seams and survivors losing everyone dear to them, the idea that creeps like this guy were taking advantage of others that had already been through so much enraged her. She recognized that he hadn’t done anything to her, that the words were no different than she had heard a hundred times before, but it was different now. She no longer saw the greasy pervert as another survivor of this disaster. In her mind, she saw him as nothing more than a pathetic opportunist. He probably hadn’t even left his property, nevermind survived any kind of attack.
Bjorn had just finished up searching the man’s ankles when Jen walked back over. He had just started moving, standing up from his search when Jen’s rifle discharged, just a few feet from his head. He jumped back, falling clumsily into the snow before spinning back up to his feet. Jen was walking back towards the Jeep, away from the smoking hole she had made in the man’s head.
“What the fuck, Jen!” he yelled at her.
Jen didn’t look back; she simply continued back across the yard to the Jeep.
Bjorn sighed heavily and took a minute to pull his frayed nerves back together.
“Let’s go check the house, Nick.” He looked evenly at the boy. “You up for it?”
“Yeah,” Nick replied, gulping over a frog in his throat.
Bjorn looked back to the Jeep and could see the slack-jawed, surprised expressions of Will and Laura inside, and Tim above. His concerns about Jen were assuaged a moment later as Will swung he door open and she collapsed into his arms. Something just must have snapped, he thought, dismissing the last of his tension about it.
“You guys check the garage,” he called at them before turning back to the house. “We’re gonna check the house.”
The two moved towards the side door the man had been walking toward with the load of cord wood.
*
Nala crept cautiously to the doorway and peered out through the doors and windows for a few minutes, looking for the source of the sound she heard. The tension mounted as she waited, listening. Unable to hear or see anything out of the ordinary and feeling trapped in the small two room office, she stepped cautiously out onto the porch. When nothing jumped out at her, she bolted across the road into the thick copse of trees for cover. She moved quickly through the trees, nervous to be near the three corpses that lay there. When she was back atop the hill that had sheltered her for the last thirty-six hours, she took a few minutes to, again, make sure that no one was around, living or otherwise. She took some time to think about her next course of action and rapidly came to the conclusion that she needed to follow the men.
Even well supplied with food and a gun, she knew it would only be a couple days before she needed more. With a broken arm and only a handful of bullets, she figured it would just be a matter of time before she found herself in a desperate situation. If she were fully healthy, she might consider giving the men a few days head-start and going it alone, but as things were, she couldn’t even wield a baseball bat in her own defense. As dangerous as they were, she understood that she needed to keep using them as a distract
ion, to draw off the zombies so she could scavenge in their wake. She saw herself as a Plover bird of sorts, with the men representing the alligator. While she recognized the necessity of following them, she was not happy about it, nor eager to do so, especially after her narrow escape the night before. She ate three granola bars and washed them down with a can of Fresca from her bag before struggling to her feet and starting her day’s journey.
That night she slept in a detached garage of a ranch house about a mile below the campfire of the men. She didn’t hear any screams that night, thankfully. She hoped they were unable to find a victim. The doors of the garage locked, so for the first time in days, she slept in safety and relative warmth. In the morning, she awoke in the back of the station wagon to the distant rumbling roar of the motorcycles leaving. She pulled herself quickly together to travel and chose not to scavenge their campsite from the night before. She had more than enough food and a case of water she found stored in the garage replenished her supply of fluids. She stepped out of the garage and lingered under the boughs of some evergreen trees while the morning sun lifted into the sky. She forced herself to wait a full thirty minutes after the men left before she started down the road after.
Just after noon, she approached the oddly named town of Kinikinik cautiously. She doubted that the men would stop this early in the day, but worried that if they chose to, they probably wouldn’t have a fire going to warn her of their presence. With these thoughts in mind, she crept slowly and cautiously through the brush off the right side of the road, opposite the signs of humanity. A sprawling housing development expanded on the left. She moved further into the brush, moving entirely out of sight of the houses. The fears that someone or something was inside those black windows looking out unnerved her. After a quarter-mile, the housing development’s road-front ended. She pushed back to the roadway on one side as the river pressed in on the opposite.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 22