by Max Danzig
There was a noise from the kitchen, and Steve appeared carrying a large plastic tray.
“I found some food,” he said as he threaded his way around sprawled corpses to the others.
“Most of the stuff in there has gone bad. I found canned goods, potato chips, crackers and something to drink.”
Without responding, Rachel, walked past the two men and made her way towards a large glass door at the end of the room. She pushed the door open and exited the building.
“Where is she going?” Steve muttered.
Rachel wasn't out of earshot.
“I'm not eating in there,” she shouted back into the building. “You two can if you want.”
Peter looked around at the gruesome surroundings and followed her out to a grassy area beyond the parking lot. Steve also followed, a little slower than Peter because he was carrying the food and was having trouble seeing his feet over the edge of the tray. Two bodies sitting in a seat by the window caught his eye.
A young woman and a man, not much older than himself, had been sitting next to each other when the virus struck. Spread out over the table in front of them was a tourist map marked with spots and dribbles of dark dried blood. On the ground at their feet beneath the table, was a young boy. His expression was frozen in a rictus of pain and fear.
All at once, Steve could only see the distorted faces of his own family. Fighting back tears he went out the door to join the others, hoping the gusting wind would hide his teary eyes from them.
Peter and Rachel had sat down next to each other at a large wooden picnic table. Steve sat opposite them.
“You okay?” Peter asked.
“Does anyone want a can of Coke?” Steve said, ignoring his question. “There are other drinks inside if you'd prefer. There's some bottled water...”
“Are you okay?” Peter asked again.
This time Steve didn't answer. He just nodded, bit his lip and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He busied himself sorting through the food he found.
“You look tired,” Rachel whispered, reaching out and giving Steve's hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Maybe we should stay here tonight. I know it's not ideal but...”
The warmth and softness of her touch triggered a change in Steve. Suddenly, and with no warning, his defenses crumbled.
“It’s just that I found my mom and sister on the bathroom floor. I can’t get that image out of my head. My other sister's in college and I don't know what happened to her. My dad left for work that morning, and I never heard from him again. I waited and waited, but he never came home.” Steve said his voice wavering and unsteady. Both Rachel and Peter looked at each other momentarily.
"I know it hurts." Rachel said, sensing his pain, but unable to understand the depths of his anguish. "My uncle and aunt have two beautiful kids. Great kids, I saw them two weeks ago and now... shit,"
There was a momentary silence and Steve continued.
“Everything’s changed now - forever. I had a family one day and the next I don’t. Now they’re gone... I still can't believe it. I feel so fucking empty inside. All I want to do is go back home and see them even though I know they’re gone but I want to see them again and ...”
“Shhh...” Rachel whispered. She tried to think of something to say but settled for silence. She knew nothing she could do or say would make him feel better. For herself, Rachel tried hard to build a mental wall so she wouldn’t think about the fate of her own family.
“I'm fucking starved,” Steve sobbed, forcing the conversation to change direction. He grabbed a small bag of potato chips and tore it open.
As they ate Peter watched Steve with sadness. He always tried to keep to himself and was often criticized by others for being antisocial and insular. Today though, watching his new friend torn apart with grief, he was strangely thankful he didn't have to mourn a similar loss.
True, he sometimes craved companionship, as he'd gotten older, but seeing Steve suffering like this had him questioning the benefits of getting too close to anyone. His own upbringing was cold and uncaring. Hugs or a kind word were almost unheard of in his home. Peter didn’t think too much about getting married, and didn’t want to have kids and end up doing the same to them as what happened to him. He wasn’t sure if he could even show affection or real love to a child.
The survivors sat and ate in silence for half an hour. From where they were sitting, they could see their truck. The thought of getting back behind the wheel and driving again depressed each of them. They knew they had few options other than to continue on their way. But for a while, the fresh air and open space was a refreshing change from the uncomfortable confinement they endured the previous week.
As was often the case, Rachel was the first to break the silence. “How are you two feeling?” she asked.
Neither man responded. Peter was deep in thought, playing with the cap from a soda bottle, and Steve was neatly folding an empty potato chip bag. Both men waited for the other to answer.
“Do you still think we made the right decision?”
Peter looked up at her with a puzzled expression on his face. “Of course we did. Are you having doubts?”
“Not at all,” she answered. “It's just that we're out here and we don't seem to be making too much progress. It'll be getting dark soon and...”
“Look, if push comes to shove we can sleep in the truck,” Peter sighed. “It won't be comfortable but it can serve our needs."
“I'm not worried,” Steve said interrupting. “I think we should get going though. The sooner we find somewhere to stop, the sooner we can get ourselves settled.”
“I know, I know,” Peter mumbled, getting up from his seat and stretching. “We'll get moving in a little while.”
With that, he wandered from the restaurant towards the truck. Rachel stared after him. She found him to be a strange man of contradictions, equally inspiring and irritating. Most of the time he seemed collected and level-headed, but sometimes he didn't seem to give a damn and his apathy was infuriating. She also noticed that if things didn’t go Peter’s way, he didn't want to know about it.
“You okay?” she asked Steve.
He nodded and smiled. “He's kind of an ass, isn't he?”
Peter stopped walking when he reached the edge of the road in front of the restaurant. He looked out across a lush green landscape and drew in several long, slow breaths of cool, refreshing air. Peter scanned the horizon from left to right and then stopped. He turned around with a broad grin plastered across his tired face, and with a wave of his hand, beckoned the others to come over to where he stood. Intrigued and concerned in equal measures, Steve and Rachel jumped up from the picnic table.
“What's the matter?” Steve asked, his heart beating in his chest.
“Over there,” he replied, pointing out into the distance. “Just look at that. It's perfect!”
“What is?” mumbled Rachel as she struggled to see what he had found.
“Can't you see it?” he babbled.
“See what?” Steve snapped.
Peter moved around so he was standing between the other two. He lifted his arm and pointed right across the valley.
“See that clearing over there?”
After a couple of seconds Rachel spotted it. “I see it,” she said.
“Now look slightly to the right.”
She did as instructed. “All I can see is a house,” she said.
“Exactly. It's perfect.”
“So you found a house in the middle of nowhere,” Steve sighed. “Is that it? Hell, we passed a thousand houses today. What's so special about this one?”
“Well both of you had trouble seeing it, right?”
“So?”
"So what does that tell you?"
Rachel and Steve looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders; sure they were missing the point.
“No idea,” Rachel muttered.
“It's isolated, off the beaten track and difficult to
find.” Peter said matter of fact.
“So, why are we trying to hide? There's no one left to hide from.” Rachel said. She couldn't understand what the big deal was. Steve on the other hand was beginning to get the idea.
“It's not about hiding, is it Peter?” he said, grinning. “It's isolated. People who lived in a place like that had to be self-sufficient.”
“Exactly,” Peter said. “Imagine this place in the winter. Get a good snow storm and you're stuck where you are. These people were farmers. They couldn't afford to be without heat and light. I bet whoever lived in that house was self-sufficient and knew how to take care of themselves. I'll bet they've got their own generator and everything.”
Rachel watched the two men who became more animated than they had been at any other time in the last week.
“It's hard enough for us to get there,” Steve continued. “And you've seen the state of the poor souls wandering around the streets. They'll never find us.”
“It's perfect,” Peter beamed.
Chapter 26
After the daily struggle to survive since the disaster began, the trio had some luck by happenstance, and a welcomed coincidence.
They had been on the road again for just over an hour since leaving the restaurant. Peter was right, the farm they’d seen in the distance was so isolated, it was hard to find. In the dark it took an hour to find the right dirt road that crossed the valley. The feeling that they were making progress was short-lived, and their mood once again gave way to frustration.
The headlights cut through the dark to illuminate the endless dirt road, twisting through the encroaching woods, and muddy valleys. Trees lining the sides of the road made it hard to see the surrounding landscape. Tensions in the truck were mounting.
“This is ridiculous,” Peter huffed as he drove. “There must be something around here somewhere.”
Rachel sat behind him. She leaned forward and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He pulled away annoyed.
“Calm down,” she sighed, trying to soothe her companion's nerves despite her own frayed feelings. “Don’t worry, we'll get there.”
“Get where? All I can see are fucking trees. I don’t have a damned clue where we are. We're probably driving in the wrong direction...”
“Got it!” Steve shouted.
“Got what?” Peter snapped.
Steve had been poring over the pages of a road atlas they found at the restaurant.
“I think I've found where we are on the map.”
“Good,” he said, his tone sarcastic. “Now can you find that house?”
“I'm trying,” he replied. “It's not easy. I can't see any landmarks to get oriented.”
“So can you see any buildings around here?”
“Hold on...”
Steve struggled to focus his eyes on the map. He was being thrown from side to side as Peter followed the winding rutted route of the narrow road.
“Anything?” Peter pressed.
“I don't think so,” Steve replied. “Can you slow or stop? I'm having trouble...”
“Look, if you can't find any buildings on this road,” Peter interrupted now angry, “do you think you could tell us how to get to another road that might actually lead somewhere?”
Another pause as Steve glared at Peter before turning back to study the map.
“There's not much around here at all...”
“Shit,” Peter cursed. “There must be something...”
“Peter take it easy,” Rachel said from the back. “We'll get there.”
Peter hammered his palm on the steering wheel in frustration. He swung the truck around in a series of turns to reverse the direction of the big truck on the narrow road. His frustration built with every turn but he managed it without getting stuck.
"If I've got this right, there should be another bend in the road soon," Steve said. "Just after the bend, there's a junction. Take a right there and we'll be on the main road in a couple of miles."
"What good is the main road? I just want a road with buildings on it."
"And I'm trying to find you one," Steve shouted. "Do you want to fucking swap places ‘cause all you've done is criticize everything I've tried to do."
“Bend coming,” Rachel sighed, cutting through their argument.
Without slowing down Peter steered around the sharp turn and back onto a tarmac road.
“Okay, here's the junction,” he said. “Was it right or left here?”
“Right...” Steve replied. He wasn't sure, but he didn't dare admit it. He turned the map round in his hands and then turned it back again.
“You're positive?”
“Of course I'm positive,” he yelled. “Just turn right.”
Seething with anger and not thinking straight, in the heat of the moment Peter screwed up and turned left.
“Shit,” he hissed under his breath.
“You idiot, what the hell did you do that for?” Steve shouted. “You ask me which way to go, I tell you, and then you go in the opposite direction. Why bother asking? I should just throw this fucking map out the window.”
“I'll throw you out of the fucking window,” Peter threatened. He became quiet as the road narrowed.
“Keep going,” Rachel suggested. “There's no way you'll be able to turn the truck around here.”
The width of the road narrowed to a single lane, and the road beneath their wheels became potted and uneven.
“What the hell is this?” Steve demanded, still pissed. “You're driving us down another fucking dirt road!”
Peter pressed down on the accelerator, forcing the truck up a steep rise. The front right wheel splashed through a deep pothole showering the front of the truck with muddy water. He switched on the wipers to clear the windshield but it smeared the mud across his field of vision, reducing his already limited visibility and forcing him to go slower.
“There,” he said, squinting through small clear gaps on the dirty windshield, into the distance and looking a little further down the road. “There's a clearing up ahead. I'll try to turn round there.”
Peter hit the windshield washer button and cleared the windshield enough to keep going and pick up the pace. He entered the small clearing and slowed the truck down to a crawl to start what was sure to be a multi-point turn.
“Wait!” Steve shouted. “Over there!”
He pointed through a gap in the trees on the other side of the road. Peter again used the wipers to further clear the windshield.
“What?” he asked, a little calmer now they stopped.
“I can see it,” Rachel said. “There's a house.”
Peter’s tired and wandering eyes settled on the isolated white building seen at the farthest reach of the headlights. He turned and looked at both Steve and Rachel.
“What do you think?” Steve asked.
Instead of answering he stomped on the accelerator sending the SUV flying down the dirt road. Like a runner in sight of the finishing line, there was a new found energy and determination in his actions.
A staggering body appeared from the darkness of the trees at the side of the dirt road and wandered into the path of the truck. Reflexes slowed by fatigue, Peter yanked the steering wheel to swerve around the miserable creature scraping the truck against a rock wall on the side of the road. For a fraction of a second, he looked in the rearview mirror. The corpse stumbled across the road and through the undergrowth on the other side. It was oblivious to the SUV thundering past, missing it by inches.
Peter forced the truck over another rise. Once over the top, the survivors had a clear view of the building. The road which they were following led to the front door of a large house.
“Looks perfect,” Rachel whispered.
The uneven road became less defined with each passing foot. It swooped down through a dense forest in a gentle arc and then crossed over a little open-sided wood bridge passing over a stream meandering down the hillside.
“It's a farm,” Steve said as they
passed an abandoned tractor and plow.
“I don’t see any animals though,” Rachel said, thinking out loud.
Peter wound down the window and sniffed the cool air. She was right - he couldn't see or smell a single cow, pig, sheep, chicken, duck or horse. Peter stopped the truck in the center of a large gravel yard, the headlights illuminating the front of the house. Without saying anything he climbed out and stretched, glad to be out of the driver’s seat.
Chapter 27
The tranquility of their isolated location was far removed from the turmoil and destruction they left behind in Derry. The three survivors stood together in the dark silence of a generous farmyard taking stock of their surroundings.
A stream and forest bordered one side of the property. Three small buildings and a large and barn stood behind the farm house. Two tractors and other rusting farm machinery sat in tall grass on the other side of the property facing the fields with a wooded area in the distance. On the furthest side of the yard were two dilapidated wooden barns.
The farmhouse itself was a large white clapboard building with a sloping green metal roof over a wraparound porch that had seen better days. Two granite steps led onto the porch and the front door which had seen many layers of paint over the years. Its thick black paint was peeling and dusty as were the shutters flanking each one of the large windows. A scattering of tall weeds grew along the perimeter of the rotting porch.
“This looks perfect,” Rachel said with enthusiasm. “What do you two think?”
She looked over at Peter who stood closest to her, but he seemed to be miles away, wrapped up in his own thoughts.
“What?” he mumbled, glancing to his side annoyed.
“I said it looks perfect,” she repeated. “What do you think Steve?”
“It's not bad,” he said, leaning against the side of the SUV. He was trying to hide, being out in the open scared him. He didn't know who or what was watching them. “It'll do for tonight.”
Peter leaned into the truck and took three flashlights out of the center console and handed Rachel and Steve each one of them. He then climbed the steps to the front door. He knocked as the other two watched from a distance. They wanted to know if anyone was home but were unsure of the reception they’d get. Peter was too tired to care. He banged on the door with his fist.