The slow zombies were struggling through the current towards her, still twenty yards off when she pulled the bag over her shoulder and started running. The roars of the fast ones split the air a moment later and she flinched reflexively, cowering from the sound. The brush to her right exploded in a flurry of movement as the three remaining fast zombies barreled down the bank and across the dry riverbed toward her. They hit the rocks at speed and two of them collided and fell into a heap after their legs got tripped up.
When her foot hit the edge of the water, she coiled herself up and leapt as far as she could towards the far bank. She almost cleared the deepest channel, but the current caught her leg and spun her about, dropping her heavily to her backside in the water. She jarred her broken arm on the submerged rocks and moaned involuntarily in agony as she scrambled back to her feet. She spotted her gun lying among the rocks below the surface of the water as she righted herself to run. The roars and splashing from behind her caused her knees to buckle in fear, momentarily. She snatched the gun out of the shallows and scampered out of reach of the nearest zombie, just as it leapt towards her. The thing’s hand slapped down in the water, landing face down in the shallows where her foot had been a moment earlier. The current tugged at its legs, angling them down current.
Nala screamed in fury and lashed out with a quick stomp to its face. The force of her kick drove the enraged thing back far enough for the current to take it fully. It slipped downstream as its hands scrabbled and clawed for a grip on her foot. The other two fast zombies had resumed chase and were just stepping into the eddy pool she had bathed in, angling upstream towards her. All around her, the slow zombies were turning about and lumbering in her direction. She snapped her head around and ran like she had never run before, angling herself from the scattered zombies on the rocky bank and moving toward the grassy cut bank above it. A loud crackling noise drew her attention further up the bank where she could see a solid panel privacy fence someone had installed.
As she watched, a panel of privacy fencing broke away under the weight of dozens of dead. They tumbled down the steep slope. She watched in horror as they continued to pour through the breach in the fence, dozens upon dozens of them. The sound of heavy footfalls behind sent a chill up her spine. Every moment of flight, she expected a cold, dead hand to close on her shoulder and drag her to the ground. One of the zombies tumbling down the steep slope rolled to a stop just a few feet in front of her, causing her to have to leap over it in stride. A loud thud issued from behind and she hazarded a look back to see that only one of the fast ones still pursued. The other had tripped over the prone zombie and was now scrambling to its feet.
She skidded to a stop and turned, lifting the pistol to eye level. She closed an eye and took sight of the thing’s head as it struggled to extricate itself from the tangle of limbs the base of the slope was fast becoming. She pulled the trigger and completely missed as the raging thing jerked about to free itself. Nala palms started sweating as she struggled to take aim for another shot when the zombie pulled free of the tangle of squirming bodies. It roared and came forward a step just as the body of another dead tumbled down, hitting it heavily in the side. She stood in shocked silence for the span of a heartbeat as the zombie tumbled into the river and was swept downstream. And then she was running again. To her left, she could see fence after fence lined up, most all of them lined with dead hands reaching over top. Some of them held fast, but to her growing horror, some did not. They collapsed or broke apart, spilling the undead piled up behind down towards her and the river.
Nearly exhausted, her thoughts turned to the river, convinced that she needed to either cross it to get away from the gathering crowd of zombies, or to jump in and float away from the rapidly disintegrating plan. She scanned the river, trying to find a section of the river that was slow enough that she could cross but strong enough that it might sweep the dead away behind her. She came to a bend in the river where the water had met with a large layer of granite and had been turned aside. The far bank was a twenty-foot-high rocky rise, spotted here and there with a few gnarled mountain conifers clinging to the cracks. As the exhaustion and cold sapped the strength from her and the dead continued to spill down around her, she looked thoughtfully at the short cliff. After a moment’s examination, she thought she climb it, even with her broken arm.
Before she lost the last of her nerve, she ran into the river. The gathering crowds of dead followed slowly behind as even more dead came down from the yards above. The water had dug deep where it had met the immutable rock and the swift current swept her off her feet once she moved out to thigh depth. She kicked and scooped with all the strength that her three working limbs had left. Slowly, terrifyingly sluggish, she moved across the deep channel toward the opposite bank. The sounds of the dead splashing into the water behind her was lost in the roar of the river and desperation of her strokes. Her hand painfully slapped the stone wall, peeling the fingernail of her ring finger back. One more stroke and she was searching for a grip as the current tugged at her, forcefully.
*
As the afternoon wore on, it became clear that the trailer swap was a much bigger ordeal than it seemed at first. They worked to detach the tongue-coupler from the hitch at the back of the Jeep. It was frozen and took nearly thirty minutes to free. They then unloaded all the lawn-care equipment from the new trailer so they could attach it, unladen, to the Jeep. Then they had to load their gear, including three snowmobiles on it. Luckily, the snowmobiles had been well-maintained by the owner and were ready for the new season. The amount of work and the length of time it took them in the bitter cold, made it abundantly clear they weren’t going to finish the job in time to scout out another place to spend the night.
“Should we stay in the house?” Laura asked.
“No!” Nick and Bjorn said in unison, forcefully.
“No one goes in there, under any circumstances!” Bjorn followed up with quickly. “We spend the night in the garage; there’s a wood stove in there.”
Bjorn’s demeanor surprised them all. The man had been somber and moping most of the journey, with good reason, so his vehemence came as a shock. Will hobbled inside the garage with his makeshift crutch and set about getting a fire stoked in the stove. Laura wrangled Luna and Sophie, setting the girls up to play, while everyone that was able to worked on the trailers. It was an hour past sunset when they all retreated to the relative warmth of the garage. They had their gear loaded and ready to depart in the morning.
They spent a quiet and cold evening huddled around the woodstove, trying to enjoy what little warmth the drafty garage didn’t whisk away immediately. Jen and Will worked feverishly to prepare a hot meal of baked beans, instant mashed potatoes, and mixed vegetables. With their bellies full of warm food, one by one, they drifted off to sleep. Nick and Chris edged off into the darkness and sounds of their hushed intimate activities drifted back to Bjorn and Tim who still sat, awake at the stove.
Tim stood, peering into the gloom to ensure that everyone else was asleep. Will and Jen were laying comfortably together, sleeping soundlessly. Behind him, Laura snored snuggled up with Luna and Sophie slept curled in her father’s lap.
“What was it?” Tim finally asked quietly.
“What was what?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Bjorn. What was in the house, and what did you shoot?”
A shadow crossed over Bjorn’s face, but he spoke nonetheless.
“The guy had a fucking kid chained up in there. There were a handful of dead kids too…it was obvious he had been…doing things to them.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” was all Tim could manage.
“The last one, the one he had chained to the radiator, must have died recently. She was undead.”
“Fuck,” Tim said, trailing off.
The two sat in silence, the sounds of teenage love fading away in the far garage bay. After a few minutes more of sitting in silence, Tim set his hand on his friend’s shoulder be
fore he moved to join his family in slumber.
*
The elbow on her broken arm struck one of the trees, sending a flash of white pain through her consciousness. Nala instinctively snapped her good arm around and just barely managed to grab hold of the offending tree before the current swept her past. She gasped for air as her head pulled free of the roiling river. The current had taken her a few hundred feet downstream and the gathered throng of zombies behind, on the opposite bank, extended far in both directions. The zombies, still advancing on her, marched into the water. She watched as one directly across from her stepped in and was quickly swept downstream. She was mesmerized by the spectacle and watched for a few moments, giggling as her pursuers were swept away, one by one. She stopped laughing when the ones to the west of her started drifting on the current, moving past dangerously close in the narrowed section of water. They mouthed and reached for her as they floated by. The fear returned, clutching her heart and reminding her of the urgency of her situation. She turned and started the arduous and painful process of dragging herself up the rocky face.
Nearly half an hour later, she sat atop the short cliff eating a Clif Bar, relaxed. Her muscles shook with cold and exertion from the arduous climb. From her vantage point, she could see that behind the lines of fencing that the undead streamed out from lay a vast housing development. Row after row of houses crept across the hillsides on the far side of the river. As she watched, the dead continued to stream out, meeting the same fate as those that had entered the waters before them. She disrobed and wrenched as much of the cold river water from her clothes as possible.
Her exultation in the narrow escape ended when she began to absorb the bleakness of the sight before her. The hundreds of homes that sprawled out ahead, covering the hills had once held families. These homes were now emptying their dead contents forth to try and snuff out more lives. A chill swept through her, greater than the chill of the icy mountain waters. She was being hunted. The dead were hunting her, and thinking of the convicts that had long since ridden off, she realized that what was left of humanity as far as she knew, was hunting her too. Wet, cold, and dispirited, she rose to her feet and finished dressing before she moved across the road into the hills.
For the next three days, Nala traveled without encountering anyone, dead or living. She intentionally stayed far from the road, keeping it just barely in sight. She would rather take the risk of encountering a bear or a mountain lion in the forest than risk coming into contact with the dead or those men again. Her parasitic relationship with the men was over. In a way, escaping from the terrible river had helped her through her fears. She knew that she could survive without them now. Water was no problem being this close to the river and its numerous estuaries and reservoirs, but she was running short on her supply of food. The last two nights she had slept sparsely in the deep, dark quiet of the forest.
It was with great hope and much greater terror that she came out of the forest to a large group of buildings in a town called Gould. One of the buildings was a rustic cabin made to look like a gold mining operation. A sign indicated that it was “The Gould Depot, Souvenirs and Collectibles.” Beyond that, she could see a small building that advertised propane and groceries. The remains of a bonfire smoldered in front of the grocery store, sending warning klaxons sounding in her head. She knew that the men had already been through here, but having lost sight of them days ago, she had no idea how long ago they had arrived here.
Fearful of encountering the men if they still lingered, or the possibility of their return if they had already departed, she moved to the front of the souvenir shop and stared long and hard through the leaded glass windows. Nothing moved inside so she tried the doorknob. It turned and the door swung inwards, noisily clattering as it struck a shelf of trinkets. Her mouth went dry and she debated running back into the forest. Not wanting to draw more attention to herself, she waited, with her heart pounding in her chest, to the count of ten. Finally, after nothing moved inside or out, she stepped through the doorway into the darkened showroom. Aside from a pocketknife she took, the store had nothing to offer her. But still, a warm, dry place to rest was a luxury she hadn’t enjoyed in some time, and one with a door she could lock was even better. It gave her a sense of security and the fact that it could keep the zombies out was even better. She briefly considered checking out the grocery store, but her fear tempered her need to relieve her hunger. She spent the night in the useless trinket shop, figuring the men would light a new fire if they were present. In the morning, if the men weren’t present and she felt comfortable with it, she would collect whatever groceries left behind.
*
They left early the next morning with Bjorn taking first turn behind the wheel. Everyone was anxious to be back on the road, especially those who knew what had happened in the house. Nearly an hour north of the house, a small town popped up on either side of them. As they approached an eternally blinking yellow light, Bjorn steered the Jeep into a gas station called the Country Fair. Tim and Bjorn got out and were able to fuel up the snowmobiles, the Jeep, and the gas cans at the vacant pumps. The wind whipped relentlessly, and were it not for the blanket of snow covering everything, Tim would have thought they were in a ghost town; not even a single undead roamed in sight.
“Think you can take over driving?” Bjorn asked as they worked together to lash down the gas cans in the trailer.
“Yeah, no problem, everything okay?”
“Yeah, my eyes are bugging out from all the white. I just want to give them a rest.”
Tim nodded and walked around the rear of the Jeep before settling into the driver’s seat.
“How is the power still on?” Laura asked as soon as the vehicle was moving again.
“Luck?” Tim said after a moment. “No cars on the roads to hit poles; just lucky the storm hasn’t dropped trees on them. I’d guess though that it won’t be long before we see the last of electricity.”
“Doesn’t someone need to be at the controls or something though?” she asked.
“I’d guess we’re running on nuclear or more likely, hydro-power up here. It’ll probably run until something goes wrong,” Will said, growing suddenly nervous of the thought of something going wrong at a nuclear power plant.
He made a mental note to try and find out where they were located so as to avoid going anywhere near them as they traveled on Route 60. They held out hope that one of the few businesses around the stretch of rural highway was a camping store, but knowing that it would not be. Tim was lost in thought as the miles crunched past under the wheels. The minutes turned into over an hour before their crawling pace through a foot of powdery snow brought them into Fredonia, New York. As the heavy Jeep crawled between a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s straddling the road, Jen rolled down her window, letting an arctic blast of air into the Jeep. Tim let off the accelerator, letting the SUV crunch to a halt in the middle of the road.
“What’s up, Jen?” Will asked, as the rest of the occupants pulled their coats closed around them.
“Shhh!” she hissed in response, instantly silencing the complaints from everyone but Luna.
The Jeep grew completely silent as Laura attended to the child. Everyone squinted, trying to listen over the whistle of the whipping winds. Finally, the winds ceased for a moment and a distant pop-pop-pop of gunfire could be heard. The gunfire lit them with both hope and trepidation. They looked around at one another, looking for an answer to the questions they all had on their minds.
They had encountered so very few people in their lengthy journey and had experienced both good and bad from these encounters. The presence of gunfire indicated that people were either fending off an attack from the undead or other people. To try and help in either scenario would be to place all of them in jeopardy, and none of them were willing to risk an unnecessary encounter. The looks they exchanged gradually communicated a common understanding. Without a word of discussion, they agreed that they were going to continue on and avoid the
source of the gunfire. Jen pressed the button and the window slid upward while Tim started the Jeep moving again. They crept along, slower with a window cracked open in order to monitor the sounds. They started seeing undead on the road, as the Jeep crawled northward on Route 60. As the business district unfolded before them, more and more of them could be seen moving on the roadway. They shuffled and staggered, moving in the same direction as the Jeep.
“Where are they going, Daddy?” Sophie timidly asked her father.
“Towards the sound of the gunshots, I’d guess,” Bjorn responded absently, as he stared out of the side window at the walking corpses.
Tim rolled his window up as the sounds of their moans grew louder outside, coming over the wind. The sound was disconcerting and he had no desire to listen to it while he steered the Jeep around them. Some of the slow undead slogging through knee-deep snow turned and slapped at the Jeep as it moved in range of them, but most ignored it continuing on in their course. The blank faces of the dead moved onward, regardless of the condition they were in, toward the sound of the gunfire. Tim did his best to steer the vehicle around the walking corpses. Occasionally, as the crowd grew denser on the roadway, it was impossible to avoid them and he was forced to bump the dead, either out of the way or underneath the tires of the heavy vehicle.
Tim slowed the vehicle again as they came in sight of a large crowd of undead gathered outside of a Walmart to the left of the four-lane road. The gunfire they had been hearing split through the air clearly, and was obviously coming from inside the mega-store. Ahead, on the roadway, more undead could be seen moving southwards towards them and the building. Everyone inside the Jeep, with the exception of Luna, who was nuzzled into her mother’s breast, stared, slack-jawed at the store as they crunched past in the heavy snow. Other than the sound of intermittent gunfire, they saw no indication of humanity.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 24