“I know, it’s just that . . .” He shook his head and sighed, “Anyway, I didn’t hear the gunshots. But I did see Jason’s truck tear off. That’s when several people came in all at once and started telling me that they could hear screaming. So I got up and went outside.” Doc leaned slightly towards Eric and said, “By the way, you were right, I do feel warmer.”
Dave took over, “We were in Jason’s Blazer tearing across the grass—Scott was pointing and yelling ‘ZOMBIES!!’—and, well, you’ve already heard what happened when we got there.”
Mike stood up and began pacing. “So after we took care of the ones that came for the kids, we piled into the Blazer—all of five of us—and headed down towards the group camp field,” he stopped and looked at Michelle and Eric, “It was a bad choice, but we didn’t know . . .” he trailed off.
“Didn’t know what?” Michelle asked.
“Anything . . . everything . . . we weren’t ready for what was happening.” Mike looked around the circle, “You know, it’s one thing to tell people at a meeting that they need to be on guard . . . but how do you tell them to protect themselves from a threat that can’t even be imagined . . . that they can’t even comprehend. I mean, holy shit, we were giving people tennis rackets as a weapon. What does that tell you?” He frowned, shaking his head in aggravation or disgust—Eric couldn’t tell which. It was probably both.
“Like you said, we didn’t know,” Dave affirmed.
“We still don’t know.” Mike heavily emphasized the word ‘still,’ dragging it out for a long measure.
“What happened next?” Michelle steered the conversation forward again.
“We drove down to the field, and it was just . . . crazy. People were screaming, fighting . . . running. Tents were down, there was a car half in the lake . . . it was like the parade scene at the end of Animal House, only with blood . . . and we were just sitting there. Stunned, I guess. Right about then this guy slams—I mean really slams— his head against the truck. Only he wasn’t alone. He had this little child—girl I think—clutched against his chest. He was like an animal, all screaming and spitting at the kid as he was beating her against the truck. I must have swore or something at him, ‘cause if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people that hurt kids. Anyway, I grabbed my crowbar in one hand and the door latch in the other, and I was just about to hop out and give the red-eyed bastard a dose of heavy metal when Scott said, ‘Hey Mike, wait a minute. I don’t think it’s him.’ Something in his voice made me stop and take another look, and sure as shit, as I’m sitting there watching, the kid twists around like a spider monkey and shimmies up the dude’s face. I can see his muscles bulging as he’s trying to get her loose, but she wasn’t budging. Then she slides around onto his back, locks her legs around his neck, and proceeds to rip his cheeks wide open. This dude got turned into a skullface right in front of the truck. And the whole time—as she’s flaying his skin apart with her bare fingers—the little ghoul is grinning like she’s on some ride at Disney World.”
“Somebody . . . I don’t know who,” Dave interjected, “suggested that we make a hasty exit from Dodge City.”
“That wasn’t what they said,” Mike grinned.
“Well, their choice of words may have been a bit more colorful, but the point was well taken. We did see several vehicles blitzing past us, so some of the people must have made it.”
“Then we heard some more gunfire. Full auto gunfire. It was coming from Golden Eagle loop,” Mike added as he stopped pacing and sat down, kicking his legs out in front like he was trying to warm his boots by the glow of Callie’s headlight campfire.
Dave, Mike, and Doc exchanged knowing glances. Callie powered down her tablet and said, “That was the calm before the storm, right?”
All three of them nodded.
Eric cut in, “OK, wait . . . were you there too?” He indicated Callie.
She shook her head, “No, I was sailing.”
“Sailing?”
Callie grinned and said, “You don’t remember me, do you Eric?”
In Eric’s experience, that was never a good question coming from a female. He quickly searched his mind, trying to locate her face somewhere in the archives of his memory, but he came up empty. He also felt Michelle’s hand begin to loosen its grip on his waist.
“I used to be in love with you,” Callie beamed. Michelle’s arm began to pick up speed as it withdrew.
Walter started to chuckle, and Callie laughed out loud, “Guys are so dumb. Eric, it’s Calista . . . ‘Callie’ for short. I was Jules’ friend from back in grade school. When I was eleven years old, you were what, maybe sixteen, and I had such a crush on you. Don’t worry though, I ditched you for Benny Peterson that fall, because he looked like Justin Timberlake . . . and he let me ride his skateboard.”
Recognition tumbled back into Eric’s memory. Jules . . . Julie . . . was Walter and Bernice’s youngest daughter, and he vaguely recalled some of her brat friends that would circle and bother him when he was trying to fish during the summer vacations he spent with Uncle Andy. Michelle’s arm stopped its retreat momentarily.
“Anyway, I got laid off, or ‘downsized’ as they called it, about a month ago from my job in the PT department at Richland General, so last week I decided to spend a couple days sailing. Walter lets me take out Jules’ little skiff anytime I’m up here, and Bernice always insists that I stay at the house.”
Eric reached down and grasped Michelle’s hand, pulling it back around his waist and holding it there. After a moment her fingers interlaced with his and squeezed gently.
Walter added, “She was out on the boat the last time you were here. I didn’t even think to mention it.”
“OK, well, good to see you again,” Eric said.
Thompson broke the momentary distraction and got them back on track. “What happened with the kid who was rippin’ that dude’s face off?”
“I don’t know,” Mike replied, “Jason cut the wheel and headed back up the road.” He looked around the circle, waiting for a response. When nothing came, Mike finished, “By the time we got back to the front gate, people were already leaving. I don’t know where they went.”
“I’m sure that—some of them at least—made it to safety,” Dave said.
“Really? Because I’m not. Hell, I’m surprised any of us made it out of that campground.”
“Did a bunch of those red eyes charge after you?” Sam asked.
“No. It was . . . weird.” Mike reached into his pocket and grabbed an already opened roll of Lifesavers, offering it with an extended arm around the circle before popping one in his own mouth. “When we got to the top, Jason said ‘get out.’ Brenda was still hacking and wiping her face, so I helped her out the door. Dave and Scott got out as well. After that, Jason took off down towards the loop where his camper was. I didn’t see him again.”
“I did,” Dave added quickly, “it wasn’t good.”
A stillness drifted over the circle as they waited for Mike to continue. Instead, Doc began to speak. “So by now, word has gotten out that something bad has happened, and it’s like a stampede of lemmings heading for the cliff. I ran over where Dave and Mike were, and we got Brenda—she had sank to her knees—up on her feet and over to the little clinic in the office. At some point Amy showed up. She looked a little green around the gills, but I remember her asking us what to do.”
Mike started again. “I’m no soldier, but I understand that you need to either circle the wagons and make a stand, or run for the border. We should have run.”
“But we couldn’t,” Doc said, “because people started coming in with family members that had scrapes and scratches . . . and bites.”
Walter looked at his watch. “We need to speed this up a bit.”
Doc sighed, “Once we got the wounded people laying down, we had a quick ‘come to Jesus’ meeting. The group . . . I guess there was about thirty of us in there at the time . . . voted to try and use the PA system to l
et everybody in the campground know to make their way toward the office. Once we had as many people as we could, we were going to caravan over to the marina.”
Mike thumbed another candy into his mouth. “OK, this is where it gets even weirder. It took us maybe twenty minutes to get the people in the clinic ready to go. The whole time we were doing that, Amy was announcing over the loudspeakers, ‘Anyone that can hear my voice in the campground, we are preparing to evacuate, please make your way as quickly as you can to the campground office. Bring your vehicle if possible.’ Nobody came. Nobody.”
“Nobody at all?” Thompson asked.
Mike shook his head. “So we started moving people out to the vehicles, a couple at a time. But while we we’re doing that, the campground was . . . eerie . . . no birds singing, even the breeze had fallen away to nothing. I swear it felt like the grim reaper was scratching his fingernails on the back of my neck.”
“Almost,” Leonard said.
Eric shifted his gaze towards the chubby man, waiting for more.
“You were closest when it happened,” Dave nodded at Leonard, “tell them what you told us.”
“Yes, well . . . we had eleven people with some sort of injury—most of them what I would consider to be very minor. Scrapes and scratches mostly. There were a few cases of what I would call panic, as well. When nobody came to the PA announcements, we decided to pack up and leave. Some of the guys had their vehicle just outside, so it wasn’t going to take us that long to load and go. We tried to make it somewhat orderly, and I believe we might have been successful . . . but right about then one of the patients had a seizure. It was a young boy who’d had a bite mark on his wrist.” Leonard looked over at Mike, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take that piece of candy now.”
“Here ya go.”
He popped the offered piece of candy into his mouth. “Mmmmm, butterscotch! Where was I? Oh yeah . . . So Dave’s wife and Doctor Collins were telling people to ‘Back up and leave him alone.’”
Doc interjected, “Not because of what was about to happen—we didn’t know that—but because that’s how you treat a seizure patient. You let the seizure run its course without restraining them, and just try and keep them from hurting themselves.”
Eric and Michelle nodded simultaneously with understanding.
Leonard continued, “The young boy was violently thrashing on the ground for at least a solid thirty seconds, and then he just stopped. I was right there. I saw him go limp . . . just collapse. So I reached down and felt for a pulse on his neck. It was there – rapid, but strong. And then he opened his eyes.”
Leonard looked at Eric, “They were bright blue, like yours . . . and then they changed. Almost instantly. It was like looking into a crystal clear glass of water at the exact moment that somebody pours in a cup of red food coloring.”
“That’s when the second person started to seize,” Doc said.
“The young boy—the first one who seized—he sat up all of a sudden. Scared the fire out of me,” Leonard said with his eyes widened, “and then he looks straight at me—straight through me—like he could see all of my sins and was counting them one by one. I’m sorry, but that was enough for me and I scooted back.”
Doc cleared his throat, “I remember what happened with Mr. Hardison at site nineteen, and as soon as I saw that boy sit up, I screamed at everyone to get out.”
“I heard Doc screaming,” Mike said, “so I busted ass back inside just in time to catch a face full of Lenny’s forehead when he came charging through.”
Leonard smiled and shrugged innocently.
“So anyway, I finally get inside, and I see this ‘Eddie Munster’ kid tearing apart the chair that Doc was using like a shield. I swung the wrecker bar and bopped him upside the head, and he went down in a heap at the same time as another little red-eyed vampire kid stood up. That was all I needed to see, so I grabbed Doc and shoved him out the door. That door opens inward, so I hooked my crowbar on the edge of it and pulled. I held it shut as Doc was stumbling toward the vehicles. That’s when they started shooting.” He looked over at Dave.
Dave waited through a moment of silence before starting. “We were almost loaded in the cars and trucks when the other ones began to show up.”
Eric tightened his grip on Michelle’s hand as Dave went on, “At first it was one or two of them. They’d just appear around the corner of a camper, or coming up the road from the loops. Slow moving, like they were really, really tired. Then they’d see us and start to speed up.”
Mike stood again, “A couple of the guys had guns, and they managed to take down the first few pairs. But then the second wave came . . . and then the third. Each time it was more and more. By the time we were all loaded, there had to be at least twenty-five of them coming up out of the loops towards us.”
Doc looked over at Walter, “One of them was Sally.”
“I saw Jason Lambert, he was covered in blood. I also recognized several of the other campers—children as well,” Dave added sadly.
Lenny crunched the remaining hard candy and swallowed. “So we were all loaded and pulling out, except we weren’t ‘all’ loaded. Mike was still holding the door shut to keep one of them inside the office.”
“The last vehicle in line, the RV I was supposed to get in, was already moving by the time I realized that I was the only one left. There was a group of infected—at least six or seven of them—that were coming around the bathhouse and heading my way pretty damn quick. So I dropped my crowbar and took off for the RV. That prick who was driving it—I know he saw me in the mirror—kept moving. I kept running, and then I see the RV braking and swerving. It didn’t stop though. Next thing I know, the back door of the camper pops open and Doc is there, pointing his little pistol in my general direction and cranking off rounds.” He looked at Doc and smiled, “You need to learn how to shoot better.”
“You need to learn how to run faster,” Doc chuckled. Turning to Eric, he continued, “The guy driving the RV would have left Mike there—I’m sure of it—if Scott hadn’t grabbed the steering wheel and punched him in the nose.”
“Mr. Lancaster?” Michelle asked.
“That’s him.”
“Anyhow,” Mike finished, “I made it into the camper and shut the door about three seconds before the pack of zombies smashed into it.”
“They’re not zombies,” Doc stated, emphasizing the word ‘not.’
In the distance a lone coyote began to howl. It was quickly joined by other members of the pack, yipping and baying until they reached a full chorus. Max perked up his ears and looked toward the door.
“Anyway,” Mike said, “we made it out of there.”
“And you’re thinking of going back?” Thompson asked.
“There might be somebody still alive,” Dave replied.
“That’s not the end of it, though,” Doc stated, “we made it to the marina with a grand total of thirty-nine people. Another fourteen people were here as well. They had apparently made it out on their own and just randomly headed west instead of east.”
Walter added, “They’d gotten ahold of me over the marine band radio, Doc and Amy that is, and I was up at the road waiting for them. Fifty-three total people from the campground made it here, and none of them were real happy. Can’t say as if I blame em’ either. Anyhow, Doc suggested that we try and consolidate the wounded in a central location, so we moved anybody that was hurt up to the house.”
“I wasn’t taking any chances though. As you know that, Walters’s basement is divided into two sections. He’s got the two car garage area, and the finished basement side. There’s a cement wall between them with a single steel door. We moved out Bernice’s car—Walter’s truck was already outside—and cleared out everything else that we could. That basically left us with a thirty-five foot square cement room. Walter rounded up a half dozen folding cots, a few more of those old military sleeping bags, and a couple of inflatable air mattresses. There were eleven people that were injured�
�that we knew about—at the campground. Subtract the two boys and that leaves us with nine.”
Dave and Walter shared a glance with Doc and Lenny, and then Mike squared towards Eric, locking his eyes as he quietly said, “That we knew about.”
Doc said, “It was chaos, really. People screaming . . . crying . . . demanding this, that, and the other. I can’t even really describe it other than to say that it was total chaos. Somehow,” he looked around the room, “a few of the more ‘even keeled’ people started pitching in and . . . and . . . um, well, let’s just say we managed to get some semblance of order. I started checking temperatures of the nine people in the sickroom—that’s what we’re calling the garage. Three of them were elevated. Since that’s the only thing that I even had a remote suspicion of being a precursor to the illness, we gave them and their families a choice—allow us to tie up and restrain the injured person, or get in a vehicle and leave.”
Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending Page 10