Was that the kind of evidence they needed to find? Town wondered. He pointed toward the corpse-filled street and realized Armstrong was already looking at it.
“Okay, so now what?” asked Town.
Armstrong thought for a moment. He knew they didn’t want to spend any more time in the middle of the street than was absolutely necessary. He whispered, “Go check out what’s on the other side of the fence. Be careful though. Sullivan’s murderers could be anywhere.”
The fence was chain link but had narrow slats of wood laced through the links, making seeing through it exceptionally difficult. He tried to see through but found it next to impossible. There was a wooden shipping crate discarded in the alley, but Town knew better than to try it as he would certainly be too heavy. He didn’t need a broken ankle.
He was trying to decide what to do when Armstrong made a clicking sound between his cheek and his teeth. It was a signal to Town and one that he had heard many times in the past. He was backing away from the end of the alley and moving toward Town. His body’s attitude was one of alarm, like he was retreating from a bear.
Armstrong shouted, “Go! Now!” as a massive group of zombies pressed themselves toward and into the narrow alley. Town was only able to see multiple pairs of hands and slowly appearing arms before he leapt over the tall fence. He didn’t need to see any more of those things. Like jumping into water of unknown depth or temperature, Town prepared himself and held his breath.
He was standing in a nearly empty storage yard used primarily by boat owners in the winter. At present, there were only two boats in obvious disrepair and several trailers used to transport boats to and from the water. Luckily, Town could see that the gate on the far side of the yard was still closed and secured with a lock.
From behind him, he heard Armstrong struggling up and over the fence as well. The other man hit the mixed gravel and paved surface breathless and wide-eyed and ready to run. Town pointed at the gate.
There was no time to rest, however. The fence behind them bowed with the weight of their pursuers, the wooden slats complaining and then cracking. The fence was not going to hold indefinitely. They needed to get out of there quickly.
Already running toward the gate and the rickety control shack next to it, Town asked, “Now where to?”Armstrong was out of breath and finding it hard to speak and run at the same time. “Any...where...but here. Try...and...get...back...if we can.”
Luckily, the door on the guard shack was unlocked on this side of the fence. They got into the building just before the fence finally failed, and into the lot piled a hungry and growing gang of demons, hell-bent on devouring Town and Armstrong. Most moved slowly and stiffly, but there were those able to move much more fluidly. Those few darted across the parking lot with furious desire putting fire into their eyes.
The shack wasn’t wide enough to accommodate both of them comfortably, but they squeezed themselves in tightly enough to close the door. It wasn’t much of a door, so they both knew it wouldn’t work as a barrier for any longer than the fence had.
Regardless of what lay ahead, they had to move. The street outside the storage yard was empty, thankfully, but its path didn’t take them back toward the hotel. They were momentarily beset with panic, like lost children separated from their parents in a giant amusement park. They had to find their way back.
From behind them, the little shack was rocked on its foundation, promising to fail and collapse at any moment. The hotel was to their right, but the only way forward was to their left and so in that direction they ran. In their desperation, they barely noticed the swirls of flittering, heavy white flakes in the darkening skies.
They were on the downtown side of Whittier, up away from the water and where most of the residents of the city had once lived. The buildings were sturdier, but they also produced longer, deeper, and darker shadows.
They ran. They had no particular destination in mind, but the road took them up toward the dominating Begich Towers perched over the rest of the city. They ran into the snow-laden gusts, both beginning to doubt their decision, and looked back over their shoulders.
The handful once pursuing them had grown to a clutch of close to two dozen. The demons didn’t notice the worsening weather as they continued their hunt. The winds blowing into their faces carried the scent of prey on it and only excited them all the more. Their bodies quaked with spasms as the fiends’ legs began to move quicker, the infection driving them with reserves of energy.
The two men were struggling to breathe as their feet propelled them forward. They passed one cross street which headed left but elected not to venture down it when they saw a group of undead loitering in the street outside another building the color of a faded and weathered school bus about a city block away. It was then that both men noticed the snow for the first time.
The twisting spires of white wreathed the wretched creatures in undulating waves of glistening flakes. Moving languidly, like statues slowly coming to life, the granite colored beasts spied the two men and turned to march toward them.
Instead of going that way, Town and Armstrong pressed forward, which also led them up the hill further away from the Inn. Town’s worry was growing. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep running. If he knew where they were heading, he might be able to trick his body into pushing itself, but without a clear goal in mind he didn’t know if he could maintain his pace. He was thankful the creatures were only moving at a speed slightly faster than an excited walk. He wasn’t required to sprint but he was running a lot more than he wanted to. Town thought back on his days playing youth football and the running he had to do then. He hated it as much in his youth as he did right now.
Armstrong was faring no better. His chest hurt and felt like it was tightening with each step. He both cursed his lifetime of smoking and longed for a cigarette at the same time.
Town was able to squeeze a question in between his panting breaths. “Why don’t we shoot?”
“Only draws more to us,” Armstrong said breathlessly. “Keep running. We can hide in that big building.”
At the next intersection, they both looked left. This road led them to the front entrance of the large apartment building to which they had been running. The narrow road was teeming with skins, like a summer stream full of spawning salmon. Seeing the two men, the horde turned and started to move toward them, the same raw hunger in their eyes as that burning in the eyes of those behind the men.
Armstrong and Town, their worry reaching a crescendo, shared a frightened look with one another. They had no choice now. They had to keep running. The road bent to the left and skirted between the school on their right and the back of the Begich Tower on the left. As before, the road was choked by corpses, some motionless and lying in the street and others drifting toward the two men. They were running out of options.
Their heads were starting to swoon from oxygen deprivation. Walking through the school’s diminutive playground, Armstrong and Town felt strangely like giants. They maneuvered through the jungle gym and miniature slide, both meant for little kids, and ran around to the back of the school.
Unfortunately, more of the same awaited them behind the school. Already moving toward the two men, a mass of feral, undead creatures were only several steps away from where the duo stood, gasping for breath.
Armstrong had had enough. His legs were in full revolt, refusing to move another step. He had no choice but to use the forty-five caliber Colt automatic pistol he had been carrying. He pulled the slide on the pistol and fired three quick rounds, which did little to discourage the press of decaying flesh.
Town started to stagger away in the only direction still open to them, into an open valley harboring the sound of running water somewhere within it. Realizing his gunshots did little more than excite the crowd, Armstrong turned and tried to run but was snagged by a rush of jagged-nailed fingers. He tried to yelp but his heaving chest couldn’t draw in enough breath.
Town neither saw nor hea
rd his companion fall beneath the swell of hungry, gnashing jaws. Armstrong was exhausted and had no strength left to fight for his life. He pushed and even managed a couple weak punches, but he was quickly and decisively overwhelmed.
The toothy mouths sank themselves into his arms and hands; into his neck and the back of his head; and finally into his face. With grinding brown teeth, the creatures rent flesh from bone, chewing the delicate tissue hungrily, blood and bits of life spilling like a crimson flood down their chins.
Armstrong was pulled apart and devoured in a matter of seconds and Town missed all of it. In fact, he thought it was his friend Armstrong coming up behind him. Town looked out into the valley in front of him, which had been carved into the mountain range by the immutable power of an ancient glacier’s ice and water. “I think...I think the Colonel is gonna get us all killed,” he said.
The words were just leaving his lips when he turned and realized his fatal error. It wasn’t Armstrong behind him. It was one of those things and its gray, claw like hand was mere inches away from him. His eyes widening in fear, Town stumbled as he tried to back away. He hit the cold ground hard, his bones and muscles protesting.
He was never able to get back to his feet. He did manage to roll over onto his hands and knees. Pleading, “No, no, no, no, no, no,” over and over, Town tried to crawl away but he, like Armstrong, was fated to fall prey to the gray horde. He too was gulped down in horrible, grunting mouthfuls.
Excited by the feeding frenzy, the fiendish host of hundreds of ghouls stood as one and turned their attention to some new sounds and new smells in Whittier. There were lights too, coming from down in the portion of the city near the water.
Chapter 57
Irritated at having been disturbed when he was just starting to settle into his room, Colonel Bear asked, “You heard what?”
The militiaman, a wiry, dark haired man of perhaps thirty-five and whose face was pocked with the remnants of an adolescence filled with acne, was visibly shaken by the Colonel’s question. Perhaps it wasn’t the question itself but the rancid-smelling breath on which it floated. The Colonel’s odor filled the room behind him and had rushed into the hallway when he opened the door. “Colonel, I think we heard gunshots.”
“You think you heard gunshots?”
“Yessir.”
“And?”
The man standing in the doorway looked around for anyone capable of intervening but there was no one within sight. He had no choice but to answer, “We thought you would want to know. We thought that maybe it was Armstrong and Town. Maybe they might need our help.”
With a cruel grin, the Colonel said, “And that’s the problem.”
Confused, the man asked, “That they need our help?”
“No. That you thought. When I want you to think, I will tell you when and what to think. Understand me?”
“Yessir.” Without another word the stung militiaman slunk down the hallway and disappeared down the stairs.
Colonel Bear stood for a minute longer while he stretched his aching back. Then he threw on his malodorous camouflaged jacket and walked laboriously in the same direction. When he passed Carter’s door, he knocked loudly three times but kept walking.
In the lobby, with only the flame in the fireplace for lighting, the Colonel conferred with another of his men, a loyal toady named Earl. They pointed and rubbed their chins, sharing words that only the two of them could hear.
Carter walked up a few minutes later smelling of hard alcohol and cigarettes, and asked loudly, “What the fuck is going on?”
Earl, his eyebrows arched high enough to intimidate the famed gateway to the West in St. Louis, sneered, “We got some skins out there comin’ toward us.”
Not amused, Carter shot back, “And?”
“We don’t know how many there might be. We need to all be ready,” said the Colonel.
Earl added, “Town and Armstrong haven’t got back yet and we heard some shots a few minutes ago.”
Carter, who had opposed the idea of sending men out late in the day, ignored Earl entirely, turning his attention wholly on Colonel Bear. “We lost two more?”
The Colonel nodded and acknowledged that he understood Carter’s question. He wasn’t asking about the men specifically but about men generally. Only a handful of days earlier, Colonel Bear had commanded a sizeable force of semi-trained but fairly well armed militia. That had all changed suddenly, and now they had only about twenty men and women with them. They still had plenty of guns but they were starting to run low on ammunition. Having lost two more of their number was not as novel or inconsequential as it had been in the recent past. They could no longer absorb losses without concern.
Fully awake and focused, Carter understood the urgency and was ready to take control. He didn’t want to start their defensive line at the Inn. That would be their fall back line. He would like to meet any threats further out to mitigate and blunt the force of their attack if possible. The creatures wouldn’t assault with any guile or planning. Like every time before, the skins would come at them head on, in relentless waves until the militia’s line broke or all of the walking corpses were dead...again.
Chapter 58
Cody needed to get some fresh air that wasn’t thick with body odor and flatulence. He was with Colonel Bear’s rearguard on the far side of the Whittier tunnel and still awaited word that they could join the others in the city. It had been more than a day since they had been left and Cody was starting to wonder if the Colonel and the rest of the militia were ever coming back.
It was their job to ensure no one followed the Colonel into and no one preceded the Colonel out of Whittier. Cody knew the job assigned to them but found it exceedingly difficult to stand watch with Oscar’s corpse dangling lifelessly in the middle of the area they needed to patrol.
Cody hadn’t known Oscar well and couldn’t claim that he much liked the guy, but the man didn’t deserve to be hanged. Cody didn’t remember signing any enlistment papers agreeing to be mindless drones...fodder to be sacrificed at the Colonel’s will.
Before the skins showed up, he had been out in the field near Sterling with his partner on a utility easement job when their radio started to squawk about “disturbances”. Details weren’t shared and they were fairly remote, so the two of them kept working. When they came back to their truck, the dispatcher was gone.
Alarmed and clueless, they drove back toward Soldotna but ran into trouble immediately. The highway was jammed with cars but many of them were abandoned, some still running. Neither could guess what could have happened to cause all those people to walk away from their vehicles. Not in a hundred lifetimes could either of the men have known. They thought they saw some people here and there but some instinct convinced them to keep driving. Cody maneuvered their utility truck along the shoulder, taking it as slowly as his agitation allowed.
Slowing because of a tighter than normal angle, the two men were afforded the opportunity to see the first evidence of something having gone afoul. An RV on the road above them had been recently abandoned, as evidenced by the doors standing open. However, a drying crimson streak adorned the white and green side of the vehicle and a perfectly formed and preserved red handprint had been left on the side behind the passenger side door. Almost reflexively, Cody stopped their truck. He needed to make certain his eyes were not deceiving him. That was most definitely blood smeared all over the RV, and a lot of it. Something horrible had happened here.
Their doubt was dispelled when they pulled into the first semi-cleared parking lot along the highway. Driving into the little restaurant’s lot, Cody saw a woman run in front of them and a trio of men following closely behind her. When they caught her, the three men tackled her and then began violently assaulting her. The woman’s screams were horrific, tickling the hairs all along Cody’s arms.
Josh, his partner, leapt from the truck and ran toward them, shouting warnings as he closed the ground between them. He was wielding a broad shovel he had pulle
d from the back of their truck. When his protests went unheeded, he struck one of the men on the back with the shovel’s flat blade. Surprised that his initial blow had gone more or less unnoticed, Josh raised the shovel and swung it harder the next time. He hit the man hard enough to knock him off of the woman and back a few paces on the pavement.
Cody watched all of this in awe from the truck. Josh shouted at the man to stay on the ground, but the man hopped to his feet, his hands hanging threateningly in his crouched position. He resembled an animal...a monster...a demon. His eyes were like windows into Hell.
Cody was as startled as Josh by the speed and ferocity of the man’s unexpected attack. He nearly flew through the air and grabbed hold of Josh without warning. Josh tried to fend him off with the shovel but it was a lost cause. The man overpowered Josh with little effort.
Desperate to help his friend, Cody scrambled with his seatbelt and the door lock. He watched helplessly as another and then another person pounced on poor Josh. In just seconds, Cody’s partner was beneath a swarming pack of killers.
Too afraid to do anything else, Cody jumped back into the truck and floored the accelerator, lurching the vehicle forward. It was then that he saw more of the same happening all over the parking lot and inside the restaurant as well. He may have driven over one of the bodies, but he couldn’t be certain.
Driving much more frantically, Cody found some open stretch of highway and put most of what he had seen behind him. He thought that perhaps a handful of those people may have run after him for a bit, but he may have only imagined that.
He avoided the Fred Meyer parking lot on the edge of Soldotna because it was as hectic as the parking lot he had only recently fled, though no one was attacking anyone else. There were just a lot of scared people like himself running into and out of the store with armloads of whatever they could carry.
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Page 32