Surviving

by Jaron McFall

  Sure, some of the other guys could work on machinery. Most were even good at it. That kind of thing was expected out of men in this area of the country. However, none of them really excelled at it or wanted to try further.

  Ross was not like this, though. He was very knowledgeable when it came to the sciences and new wave engineering. Granted, he was horrid at mechanics as the group had found out. Cedric had tasked Ross with cleaning the corrosion from the alternator post on the tractor that was taking up a large space of the shop a few days previously. When Cedric went to check, Ross had completely removed the starter trying to find any sign of corrosion.

  He was excellent at theory, however. Ross had stayed in touch with some of the stories of the best scientific engineering projects. He could think of incredible ideas and how they should work but was unable to actually bring them to life. Combine that with the fact there was now an actual engineer and this was a great partnership for them. Cedric was naturally gifted at shop related projects, so he could be the hands behind Ross’s ideas.

  This current project was a stationary railgun. The crew knew they would eventually run out of gunpowder-based weaponry. They didn’t want to rely completely on hand-to-hand and melee weapons should that day come. Cedric was currently in the process of building a rotational base out of some spare car parts he had found in the auto shop.

  The theory was that the actual firing mechanisms would be based on strong magnetic pulses that could fire iron projectiles cleanly and accurately. The difficulty with this, aside from the electrical components, was that the base had to be able to support the extreme weight of the barrel; especially since it was on a swivel.

  Cedric was in the process of greasing the bearings thinking on how to miniaturize this railgun when he heard the door click shut. He hadn’t heard it open. He looked up into the dark shop and slowly reached for his gun. When his hand touched his hip, he realized he had left it in the Culinary Arts room with his pipe and everything else. He was still in his pajamas.

  “Stupid,” Cedric muttered as he grabbed a crescent wrench from his workspace. He had been sitting in near darkness, only a small lamp lighting his area, with no weapons.

  “That’s just mean,” a female voice said that Cedric didn’t immediately recognize.

  “Karli?” Cedric asked just as she stepped into the light of the lamp.

  “Is there another girl our age around here?” Karli replied.

  “Well, Denise is,” Cedric said feeling stupid. “But, you’re right. I would have recognized her. Plus, she wouldn’t have snuck up on someone who could have shot her.”

  Karli smiled lightly as she took another couple of steps forward. She, like Cedric, was still dressed in her pajamas. She was wearing the pants from a suit of scrubs and one of those sleeveless undershirts. Spaghetti straps? Cedric wondered trying to think what it was called. He probably could have cared less what it was called, but not by much. The majority of his mind was too embarrassed and cautious to really think about much else.

  To Cedric, this girl was gorgeous. Her dark brown hair had a slight natural curl to it going down to at least her shoulder blades. Her blueish-green eyes were striking in the lamplight. For the first time, she was actually wearing glasses. Cedric didn’t know she wore glasses, she hadn’t before. They looked nice on her. And the scrub pants completely accentuated her athletic figure.

  “Well,” Karlie said breaking the momentary silence.

  Cedric’s faced felt hot because he just knew she knew what he was just thinking about. “I thought you might need this. I noticed you left it.” She held out his gun.

  Even her voice is beautiful. Cedric thought. “Right. Um, I guess it’s good I left it then.”

  “So, I would come find you?” Karli asked.

  Cedric’s face was now on fire. She was teasing him now, and he knew it. He didn’t exactly know how to talk to girls. Sure, he was seventeen, almost eighteen. But he had no idea what to really say to girls. He never had time for dates. He had gone stag to junior prom dressed like a gangster. He could show off, yeah. But he could never manage to keep up a conversation with a girl. Especially not a pretty one—and never a smart one.

  “No. I mean, so I didn’t pull a gun on you when you came in here,” Cedric said hastily.

  “So, you think I would have still come in here if you hadn’t left your gun?” Karli said teasing some more. Cedric could tell she was really enjoying this.

  This is just cruel. Cedric thought, but I’ll take it. “Right. I guess not. No reason why you would need to. So, thanks. Just in case I need this,” he said setting the handgun down on the workbench. “So, why are you up anyway? Did I wake you?”

  “No, we are both having trouble sleeping, I guess. I’ve noticed you haven’t been sleeping well the last few nights.”

  “So, you’ve been watching me sleep?” Cedric said trying to gain the upper hand and turn her words back on her for a change.

  “Yes. I have,” Karli said. Cedric wished he hadn’t tried because there was no way he would get the upper hand on her. He was now self-conscious about his sleep habits as well as embarrassed.

  Karli sat down in the extra seat at the workbench. Cedric followed by sitting back down on his seat.. “What are you working on anyway?”

  Cedric assumed that Karli wouldn’t want to hear about the mechanics of railguns, so he just said, “A large gun for the roof. We are going to try to put one on every corner.”

  “Oh? Well, it looks like a swivel chair to me,” Karli said.

  At least she isn’t teasing me anymore. Cedric thought. “Yeah. It will have a chair on a mount to help compensate the weight.”

  “So, what kind of gun is it?” She asked.

  “Well,” Cedric responded, “hopefully it will be a railgun.”

  Karlie looked thoughtfully at the contraption for a moment, “And how will you compensate the electric pull for the electromagnetic rails?”

  Cedric’s eyes widened slightly as he realized that she actually understood how they worked. “Dear lord, I think I love you,” Cedric said without thinking. It was a line he used when he was trying to show off to his female friends at school. He didn’t use it as flirting necessarily, but rather as a statement that he liked what the other person had done. He immediately regretted it.

  “Yeah. Let’s not go there,” Karli said. “I would say not if you were the last guy on Earth, but that might actually happen these days. And I wouldn’t mean it even if I said it. You’re okay, I guess.” She smiled ruefully. She knew from the start what Cedric had meant and how he meant it exactly. She just seemed to enjoy using her brains against him.

  “Right,” Cedric said.

  “But I would have ended up coming after you even if you didn’t need your gun,” Karli said. “I haven’t thanked you. You saved my life. I guess I sort of owe you.”

  Cedric smiled at this. He tried not to, but couldn’t help it.

  Karli saw the smile and how Cedric tried to hide it. She smacked him hard in the chest. “God, Cedric. I try to thank you and just like a guy, you think perverted thoughts. Yeah, we’re sitting in pajamas in a dark shop. Hell no, it’s not happening.”

  “I didn’t,” Cedric started but stopped at the glare Karli gave him. He took a breath in, “I really didn’t think that. I promise.”

  “Whatever,” Karli said as she pushed her hair out of her face. “I won’t argue about your nasty thoughts. But I just wanted to say thanks, and, well, take care tomorrow. Of my dad, I mean. Make sure that idiot doesn’t hurt himself. And make sure you make it back, too. You seem to know some of what you’re doing. That could be useful.” Karli started to stand as she said the last sentence.

  “Well, at least you think I’m usefu…” Cedric didn’t get to finish the last of his sentence because Karli’s lips met his and he was struck silent. It wasn’t a long kiss, just a quick brush of the lips. But it was more than enough to make Cedric forget about everything. Cedric noticed the taste of lime flavored
Chapstick. When her hair fell across his face, he smelled strawberries.

  Almost as quick as it had started, it was over.

  “So, thanks,” Karli said after she pulled away. She immediately turned on her heel and strode back to the door.

  Cedric sat in silence and watched Karli leave. After she had been gone for nearly ten minutes, Cedric washed the grease from his hands and returned to bed for another couple hours of sleep before the long day ahead.

  The nightmares did not wake Cedric again. Instead, he had dreams of a very short, very unexpected kiss.

  Chapter Fifteen:

  THE HOSPITAL

  It was early morning. Cedric, Charlie, and the rest of the crew going were loaded up into the two armored vehicles ready to depart for the hospital. Unlike the trip to move into the school, or even the trip to Walmart, the group did not exactly have a plan for the hospital. They did have one part of their plan, however. The crew needed to make one stop before the hospital.

  Just before the group left, they said their goodbyes to everyone who would be staying behind. They were wished luck and given many hugs. The only person who did not come to see them off was Ben, who volunteered to take roof duty by himself. After Cedric was done saying goodbye, he saw Karli giving her dad a hug. They made the briefest moment of eye contact before she broke it and looked away. Not before Cedric thought he saw the briefest hint of a smile, though.

  When Ross’s group had been picked up at Walgreen’s, Sue had managed to chain the emergency exit in such a way that they could get back in with a key. When the two vehicles pulled to the rear of the store, they found that the door was still locked up tight.

  They drove one more time around the store to make sure that the other emergency exit and the boarded-up front door had not been tampered with. After this, Sue and Cedric both jumped out of their respective front seats, and Ron jumping from the back seat of the Jeep, and ran for the door. There were, surprisingly, no infected in the vicinity.

  The trio of survivors went around the store with a shopping cart each and looted everything they could find that might be useful. This, unlike Walmart, Cedric decided, was actually a safe place to loot. No infected whatsoever. Cedric found more food, though most was Halloween and Christmas candy, in the stockroom.

  Sue, on the other hand, took her cart straight to the pharmacy. Her job was medicine. She began going through shelf after shelf of prescription drugs. By the time she got everything she knew that they would need, she had half a cart full. She then began to fill the cart with everything she thought they could use at any point. These, the non-essential prescriptions, filled another cart entirely.

  Ron was the one who was to search the store. He had a list. However, Ron was not a shopper. He could count on one hand the number of times he had gone shopping with his wife in the twenty-three years they had been married. He knew where nothing was. His slow pace, taking it isle by isle, product by product, made sure that by the time Cedric and Sue were finished, Ron had barely begun.

  When Cedric came out to find Ron, he was in still in the second isle. Ron hadn’t even moved from Cosmetics. “Here, Ron, let me show you,” Cedric said. Cedric then held his arm like a rake and pushed the entire rack of deodorant Ron had been inspecting into the cart. “We need all of the things like this. We just need to gather and go. While we are safe in here, we’re burning daylight.”

  After this quick instruction, Ron was still in a slight fog. Cedric made a mental note to himself that in all future trips, Ron needed to be the driver.

  In total, the crew had been at the store for just under two hours. While they had found everything they needed in just over the first hour, it took them nearly forty minutes to load the products. The first thing they did was to fill Sue’s car. After Ross had been away from their group for a day, Sue had pulled her car into the stockroom.

  After the car was loaded to its full capacity, the crew started to get ready to load into the Jeep. To save time in the open, the crew first loaded products into tote boxes that Walgreen’s used to use for shipping products. This not only made it easy to load the products into the truck, but a lot quicker than throwing hundred, if not thousands, of small boxes and packages would have been.

  After the trip to Walgreen’s, medical equipment was next. The hospital was easy enough to get to. It was less than a five-minute drive from Walgreen’s. Again, just as Jack and Charlie hadn’t seen a single infected since they had left the school, they didn’t see a single one in the parking lot of the hospital either. One thing that was noticed immediately was that there were two ambulances parked directly in front of the hospital.

  This was one of the many unknown variables in the plan: would there be an ambulance that could be stolen? If not, one of the main pieces of equipment that the group needed would likely have to have been left behind. “Contrary to popular belief thanks to television and the name, a portable X-ray machine is not exactly portable by most standards,” Sue had told the group while they were making the plan. “Maybe if we lived in Beverly Hills, or even at UT Medical Center in Knoxville. The one Rogersville has, though, I guarantee it will be the size and weight of a motorcycle.”

  Again, the crew had a list when entering their mission. The main goals of the hospital trip were for extra antibiotics, equipment for Karli and Ann in case of a severe asthma attack, the x-ray machine, and other various catch-all emergency gear and equipment.

  Instead of charging in this time, as they had done on nearly every other looting mission, the crew decided to sneak in. The one point that was in the front of everyone’s mind was that once bitten, many people would likely have gone straight to the emergency room. And, unfortunately, this was exactly where this crew needed to go.

  Jack stayed behind in the Jeep, just in case. All of the other five leaped out of their vehicles and slung an empty backpack over their shoulders. They had talked about the different ways to enter the hospital, but since none of them were really familiar with them, they decided the front ER doors would be the best way in and out. It had been weeks since the infection started. They hoped that meant that some, or even many of the infected, would be cleared out.

  Before going through the front door, Charlie and Cedric looked in both ambulances while Ron, Danny, and Sue kept a lookout. Seeing they were both empty, they tried starting them. To their great relief, both ambulances started after a couple of minutes. “Quarter of a tank,” Cedric said after he climbed out of the driver’s seat.

  “Full tank, little brother,” Charlie nearly shouted with too much excitement.

  “I think this may go off without a hitch,” Ron said.

  The other four stared at Ron, but it was Charlie who answered, “You never, never, ever say that. Watch a movie, Ron. You never jinx it.”

  With a renewed silence, the group ran to the doors. Cedric wiped the gathered dust from the window and looked in, “Ten, maybe fifteen bodies just lying there.” Cedric tapped the glass. None of the bodies moved. Charlie and Ron then grabbed the sliding doors and began to pull them apart. Still, the bodies did not move.

  Silently, the group stalked into the building. Guns raised, they went to the first body. Cedric, who was closest, turned to the others and pointed at his forehead. When the others got close enough to see the face, they saw that a nail the size and thickness of a wooden pencil had been shoved into the dead man’s forehead. Upon getting close to the next body, they saw that she, too, had a nail in her temple. The next body, however, had a bullet hole. Upon looking at all of the corpses, they found a mixture of bullet holes and nails. “What happened here?” Sue wondered aloud.

  “Don’t know, keep moving,” Charlie responded.

  The crew continued their course. They weren’t sure exactly which ways to turn, or where exactly to go. They peered down hallways and into rooms. They had been in the hospital for nearly twenty minutes before they found the room they were looking for. The sign on the door read Medical Supply. All of the group entered to find the room empty
of bodies but completely filled with supplies.

  The crew began filling their previously empty backpacks: sutures, gauze, prep pads, cast materials, needles, non-controlled drugs, and much more. “Almost everything we need is here,” Charlie said. “Now, we just need the x-ray.”

  “And oxygen tanks,” Sue reminded him.

  “Shouldn’t there be some on the ambulances? Along with a defibrillator?”

  Ron responded to this, “I would rather not take the chance if we can avoid it. If we can get some oxygen, I would feel better about it. And books. Medical books.”

  With all the backpacks loaded fully, and Ron with a nebulizer in his arms, the crew began walking down the hallway again. By this point, almost forty minutes had passed with the group in the hospital. Within another five minutes, however, the crew found a room labeled Equipment Storage.

  Charlie and Cedric entered this room alone. Though the room itself was bigger, there were big, bulky objects and carts everywhere. All five people could not fit. Cedric and Charlie rolled their spoils of looting out into the hallway from the latest room: Two crash carts and an x-ray machine.

  From here, Danny took point. Gun held high, Cedric was right behind Danny, while Ron and Sue pushed crash carts, the nebulizer stored safely on top of one. Charlie pulled the x-ray machine at the rear while keeping an eye behind them. “I think Ron was right. We might actually be having a good day,” Cedric said. They were less than five minutes from the exit.

  Danny was about ten feet in front of Cedric. Cedric saw him turn a corner with his gun raised.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Cedric just had time to register that Danny’s nine millimeter carbine rifle shot three rounds before he heard him scream. Cedric rushed forward around the corner and saw Danny lying motionless on the floor—two infected humans on top of him. Cedric could not see Danny’s face, which he was thankful for. It almost looked like the woman hovering over him was kissing him on his face. Cedric knew what was really happening. He could see the maroon stain spreading across the floor underneath his comrade.