Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness

by JT Sawyer

  “Time—there isn’t much time before I freeze to death and it’s over,” she muttered to herself as if she’d forgotten. Her vision narrowed and the fear of hypothermia caused another sudden surge of adrenaline to dump into her veins. Carlie looked ahead and saw a cluster of low-hanging spruce branches that were dead, their fine twigs covered with brown needles. She staggered forward, each foot feeling like it was encased in cement.

  Reaching the tree, she began furiously breaking clumps of dry twigs and foisting the tinder onto a pile under the dry ground near the edge of the canopy. She fumbled through her vest pocket for her survival kit and removed a spark-rod. Her pale fingers felt like footballs as she struggled to grip the firemaking device that she had used hundreds of times in practice scenarios with her team. Kneeling down, she began feverishly working the metal striker against the spark rod. The fine tinder eventually flickered and then caught flame. She felt a pained smile emerge as her half-frozen cheeks tried to move.

  The flames grew higher from the resinous wood and she stood up, breaking down larger branches and placing them onto the tiny fire. She piled more resinous branches on until she had a waist-high pile. Within a few minutes the crackling fire created a micro-environment that grew with each armload of resinous wood. Carlie removed her wet clothes and suspended these on branches near the heat then yanked off her semi-frozen boots. These she filled with hot dirt from around the coals, using several changes to steam out the interior over the next hour.

  She wrapped up in her fleece overcoat, which still retained its loft even though it was wet. Thinking back on the weeks and months of suffering and hardship that she had endured, Carlie reflected on her undeniable bond and commitment to her team. Then she sensed the confines of her heart yielding whenever she thought of Shane—a feeling she had tried to convince herself needed to be corralled and relegated to the farthest reaches of her being lest she lose control. Now she realized that that feeling was all that mattered in this insane world. Love is what ultimately enabled a person to prevail and live rather than merely survive.

  Carlie was still shivering but with each rise of the growing flames, warmth returned to her eyes and she felt a surge of hope for the future flood back into her soul.

  Chapter 27

  Eliza’s rifle ran dry and she transitioned to her pistol, dispatching two zombies that moved in around the guardrail. She quickly glanced at the raging waters below for any signs of Carlie. She strained her eyes downriver for movement—of Carlie clinging to a branch waiting for her help—but only saw the distant whitecaps as they roared through the gorge.

  The sound of gunfire brought her focus back to the road. She angled off to the smashed front grill of the semi and rejoined the melee as the zombie horde was steadily reduced. The remaining twenty creatures were mowed down by the line of shoulder-to-shoulder fighters, the air obscured by a pink fog of gunsmoke and blood particulates.

  Matias dropped a fresh magazine into his rifle and did a slow sweep along the road and rear of the truck for any stragglers, ending full-circle by the smashed guardrail. He could hear a low rumble of vehicles moving along the road in the distance and saw black plumes of diesel smoke rising up from the approaching rigs. He motioned to the rest of the group to head back up the hill.

  “We have to mount a search effort,” Eliza yelled, her eyes rollercoaster wild. “She’s gotta be along the riverbank somewhere.”

  “There’s no time. The enemy is headed this way and we are greatly outnumbered,” said Matias, grabbing her sleeve. “Believe me, I’d go back right now if there was a chance we might be able to locate her but we don’t even know how far down the river she went and we can’t risk losing anyone else.”

  “She’s alive, Matias,” she said, pulling away and clenching her fists.

  “If anyone could’ve made it through, it’d be Carlie. And she’s probably on some riverbank with her fist held up at the world, cursing. Right now, there’s a bigger picture we have to focus on. We need to get this band of fighters and our team in place to sweep up behind Mitchell’s forces.”

  Matias moved up closer to the young woman, whose face was taut and body rigid. “Eliza, I need your help in working with these people—you know them and they trust you. If they see you faltering then this is going to fall apart.”

  Eliza sniffled and then took several deep breaths, her breath misting up like tiny ghosts dancing on the pine boughs. “What do you need?”

  “Right now, let’s get back into the forest and out of sight. Then we’ll call Duncan and inform him of our situation.

  Eliza nodded then ran alongside Matias. They retraced their steps up to the ledge as Eliza kept casting glances back over her shoulder to the swollen waters below.

  Chapter 28

  Shane made a sweep of the warden’s office and examined the maps tacked on the crumbling drywall. There wasn’t much of value, nothing that he didn’t already know regarding the attack on the dam. He looked at a bunch of black-and-white drawings papered on the wall. Each contained exquisite artwork of different cities from around the world. “Bizarre son-of-a-bitch,” he muttered under his breath.

  Shane heard Duncan’s voice coming into his earpiece. He tapped his ear-mic then moved towards the large window overlooking the prison grounds.

  “Go ahead, Hammerhead, this is Black Bear,” said Shane.

  “What’s the intel on your recon there?”

  “This place is a ghost town. Other than a few sentries we dispatched, it’s completely empty. Even lacking in zombies. We also found that the main circuit breakers were destroyed and water tankers ruptured. They weren’t planning on living here again.”

  “How close are you to departing?”

  “I’ve gotta gather up a few items that may be of value and the helo is inbound in fifteen minutes. I’ve already sent a fuel truck and ambulance we discovered and they’re headed back to Lewis. We can be on our way to you after that.”

  “No, I need you to link up with the resistance fighters near Yakima. Matias is leading his group along a southeastern flank behind the prison army headed our way.”

  “Matias? Where’s Carlie?”

  “Listen, Shane.” The voice in his earpiece hesitated. “Carlie is MIA. She disappeared after a skirmish. Eliza said she last saw her taking a fall into a river while fighting off a few creatures. I’m…I’m sorry.”

  Shane felt his mouth go dry and his stomach coil in knots. He must be wrong. Carlie just got separated—probably making her way back to the group now.

  “I need you to link up with Matias, near Yakima, do you copy?”

  Shane was silent, not even hearing the last order. He thought of her lovely eyes which now seemed so distant. He choked down a breath, his sides squeezing in on him.

  The order came through again, Duncan’s voice growing louder in his ear. He tapped on his ear-mic, his eyes racing along the ceiling of the room and his chest heaving. “Copy that,” he said robotically.

  He clicked off his ear-mic and then steadied himself on the table. His vision narrowed and his hands gripped the metal edge while he hung his head low. As the tremors inside him built up and he fought to choke back his tears, his grip increased until he finally bent to his side and jerked the table over, sending it crashing into the wall. Shane grabbed a chair, flinging it through the window. He moved up to the edge of the jagged glass, staring out the gaping hole at the snow-covered peaks in the distance and hardly noticing the onslaught of cold rushing in. “You better still be alive and kickin’ ass, Carlie, you stubborn, reckless,…” He leaned against a steel filing cabinet and pounded his gloved fist on its side.

  The door behind him swung open and Jared entered followed by Amy, their weapons leveled. “What the hell—thought there was a bunch of biters in here,” said Jared, looking at the upended table and the shattered window.

  “Hey, you OK?” said Amy.

  Shane clenched his jaw, taking a deep breath. “Carlie’s missing—there was a battle—she fell…and�
�she got swept away in some goddamned river.”

  Jared shook his head and gripped his lowered rifle while Amy half-staggered to a chair and plunked down. The only noise was the fluttering of the wall map as one corner had loosened and whipped furiously against itself. The rest of Shane’s team was coming up the steps and filed into the room. Shane heard the voice of the helicopter pilot crackling in his earpiece, their ETA ten minutes out from the prison.

  Shane looked out at the mountains again and then let out a snarl. He grabbed his pack off the ground and pushed past the others, trotting down the stairs. “Let’s move, we’ve got a search-and-rescue op to take care of enroute to Yakima.”

  Chapter 29

  The fuel tanker and ambulance bobbed along the secondary highway until they were an hour from Fort Lewis. Mitchell had twelve of his best shooters accompanying him and nine heavily sedated mutants. His men were pressed as far back into the rear wall as they could go, keeping an eye on the tangle of subdued creatures at the other end, their features illuminated by the green glo-sticks in the middle of the compartment. The mutants’ eyes were filled with raging hunger but still kept in check by the narcotics.

  Each lithe creature was nearly a carbon copy of the others. The virus preferring ectomorphic body types which it then ravaged and outwardly reshaped into the same pale, smooth-skinned exterior. Where there had been hair there were now spiderwebs of fine red veins; the eye-sockets were sunken and the eyes themselves bulbous, which allowed for increased peripheral vision; and the fingernails were hardened and protruded like those of a badger, their nailbeds encrusted with the remains of former victims. Mitchell could hear their orchestrated breathing, the shrill sound resembling a broken whistle. Attached to each mutant was a vest containing small C4 charges.

  Mitchell pondered the intel he had gathered from the interrogation of personnel captured at the remote military outpost. He went over the layout of Fort Lewis that he had memorized and rehearsed his upcoming assault. A short time later, he opened his eyes and looked at the illuminated face of his watch. “An hour until the tranquilizers wear off and we’re at the east entrance of Lewis. Then, we release these hellish fiends.” He glanced around at his men and then at the twitching mutants. “We need to take out the helo bay first.” Mitchell handed the detonators for the explosive vests on the mutants to Deacon, who was sitting beside him. “Once that’s done, let the muties hash out some carnage around the base. Any that are cut down, detonate their vests and take out as many personnel around them as you can. I want the buildings intact. I repeat—do not detonate any muties that go inside the structures.”

  “Don’t we want to try and save the helo bay?” said a dark-haired man with a braided beard.

  “Once the security of the dam is assured and Lewis is ours, we will be the sole governing force in the Pacific Northwest. From there we can sweep down through the other states and take what we want from other bases and regions. More firepower is in our very near future. Besides, a nice explosion in the helo bay will draw everyone out from the adjoining buildings—it will be quite a mutant chompfest.”

  Mitchell reached into his vest pocket, removing an amber bottle with pills concocted from his own synergistic blend of meth-amphetamines, caffeine, and ephedra. He had used this potent pharmaceutical before to stay awake for three days at a time on missions—it turned the normal human engine into an amped-up race dragon, nearly impervious to pain and fatigue. He popped off the lid and took out two pills, ingesting them without water, then handed the bottle to Deacon. “Everybody take a few of these and pass it around.”

  “What is it?” said the bearded man across from him.

  “Three parts lightning and one part thunder.” He smiled and took a deep breath. “There’s going to be a helluva storm coming.”

  Chapter 30

  After her clothes and footwear were semi-dry, Carlie pulled out a weatherproof topo map and her baseplate compass then plotted a bearing back to the encampment near Yakima. If she was lucky, she could link up with the remaining personnel from Darcy’s group and get a message out on their radio. She sighted in her bearing and began the arduous and time-consuming process of lining up landmarks to walk a straight line as she walked through the dense forest.

  Several hours later, concealed in the treeline, Carlie came across what looked like an abandoned ranch. She studied the distant buildings and meadow for movement. The center house was still intact but surrounded by numerous structures that had recently burned to the ground, a few wisps of smoke still wafting upward. She saw close to a hundred men climbing aboard a single semi-truck whose interior walls were lined with benches welded to the frame. In the center of the cargo area were what looked like stacks of rifles and ammo boxes. Within minutes, the vehicle pulled out and disappeared down the road through the forest.

  Carlie’s attention was diverted back to the front of the house, where two men were moving the remains of dead bodies into a pile. She saw a third man come around the side with a can of gasoline in his right hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. All three men were dressed in army fatigues.

  Carlie moved a hundred yards south along the treeline searching for others, but only saw a few cows anxiously huddled in a distant corner of the property. After she was confident that her odds were three-to-one, she slunk along the back of the property towards the remains of a charred barn. She made her way to the rear of the main house and entered through the back door, its hinges barely attached. As she swept through the kitchen with her pistol extended, she caught sight of the fire out front erupting. She stepped over the fallen figure of an older woman clad in an apron, her silver hair fluttering in the breeze whipping along the floor. Carlie cleared the rest of the downstairs, noticing the spent rounds lying on the oak floorboards and bloodstains along with the slumped body of an older man in Carharts resting against a bookcase. His eyes were glossed over and bullet wounds lined his midsection. From the odor in the house and the lack of significant decay, she surmised he had died in the last few days.

  Carlie raised her head up to the corner of the jagged front window and peered past the thin veil of fluttering white curtains to the men outside. The three were laughing as they passed around the whiskey, commenting on their role in the gruesome slaughter.

  “Did you see the look on the face of that one woman when we tossed her in the truck with the mutants?” said a tall man with tattoos adorning his skull.

  “What about that old dude on crutches who kept jabbing at the freaks while trying to get to the house,” the fat man said as he imitated hopping on one leg.

  The man in the middle, who was wearing a white cowboy hat and had just donned a tan trenchcoat from a pile of clothing beside the fire, yelled at the other two. “One of you go inside the house and get those old fucks and dump ’em on the fire with the others. Then we gonna get us a cow and grill up some steaks tonight.”

  As the fat man walked up the porch and swung open the screen door, his nose crunched under the weight of Carlie’s pistol, the butt slamming into his pudgy face. The man recoiled as her boot drove into his chest, sending him over the railing into a pile of firewood.

  While the skinny man stood in shock for a second, Carlie placed a round into his forehead, watching it shatter like a crystal sphere. Then she swung around and shot the third man in the head twice. He crumpled to his knees, falling into the blaze.

  Carlie walked down the steps and stood over the large man, who was clutching his fractured face and screaming. She tapped his thrashing head with her muddy boot. “How many more of you are there here?”

  “Just us. The rest are all headed north.”

  “Why were you three left here?”

  The man tried to sit up but she knocked his elbow out, causing him to careen back into the mud. “We were supposed to drive a truckload of freaks out to one of your smaller outposts to the west of here in a few hours and turn ’em loose then head to Lewis to meet the others.”

  “Lewis,” Carlie said with a f
rown. “You mean the dam, don’t you?”

  The rotund figure shrugged his thick shoulders as Carlie jabbed him in the ribs with her boots. “All I know is that he had a shitload of doped-up mutants he was gettin’ ready to take to Lewis and the others were gonna meet him there.”

  Carlie’s eyes shifted around on the ground, trying to determine Mitchell’s next move. My God—the dam was only one small part of his plan. He wants Fort Lewis as well. Her heart began racing and she felt so utterly alone. I have to warn the others—Lavine—before it’s too late and everything that we fought for all these months is lost forever. I need to get out of here.

  “Anything else I can help you with, bitch? I could use a fucking first-aid kit now before you cuff me.” He pulled his hands back from his bloody face. “I heard you Fort Lewis types still try and be civilized by locking up lawbreakers, eh. So, go ahead with readin’ me my rights.” The man smirked but then growled at the pain from his defiant expression.

  She looked at the pathetic brute. In another time, she would have taken him to jail and then been free of her moral duties. “Cuff you? Why, this is your trial, right here.” She raised her pistol at his head; his eyes widened. “And if I had more rounds to spare, I’d see to it that you got one for each of the poor souls you killed here today.” The sound of gunfire from her barrel filled the cold morning air and then silence settled over the valley as though the forest was holding its breath.

  Carlie searched the goons’ pockets for vehicle keys and removed their weapons. She walked around back and inspected the green jeep, noting the ample fuel level. Carlie looked up at the old ranch house with its antique wood trim, wondering how many winters it had been through and how many family gatherings had taken place under its roof.