Shore Haven

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  A silence spread over us all, as the doctor carried the case to Dayton. He opened it and looked at the vials and injectors.

  “Jason…” Dayton started before cutting himself off, apparently not knowing what he wanted to say.

  “I promise it works. We’ll leave that with you, and you guys can decide to take it or not. Wait until you get to Shore Haven and talk to those there if you want. Talk to the man who got bit. Or don’t take it. Shore Haven is safe. Either way, we need to get on the road,” Jason said, motioning for us to get back in our vehicles.

  “I’ll take it and go with you,” Dayton said, then handed the case back to the doctor so that he could remove his jacket. A good number of other people followed suit, and some of them volunteered to go with us. Not all of Dayton’s men took the shot, though, so the doctor showed a few who did take it but who were going on to Shore Haven how to use the injector.

  While Dayton’s people waited to see how they would react to the vaccine, we set about changing out vehicles and gathering more weapons. We wished we were able to stay longer to help them finish packing up the base, but with each hour we spent there, all of us started to feel antsy. The promised date wasn’t for another few days, but that didn’t calm our nerves.

  Before our two groups parted, Jason radioed Shore Haven to let Jasper know that another group of people was headed his way. He was both disappointed and gratified to know that Dayton wouldn’t be with the group but was accompanying Jason.

  I was a little jealous of Jason and Jasper. Not only did they have family who’d survived, but also had a friend. Nearly all of the rest of us just had each other. There were a few others who also had someone they’d known before the outbreak, of course, but not many. I envied them. At times, I even resented them for it as if they’d had some kind of control over what was happening. My resentment usually turned into anger at myself. I firmly believed, despite Jason’s constant reassurance, that Maddie would still be alive if it weren’t for me. I also believed, despite how much I was glad I found Jason, that if one of us should be dead, it should be me. Maddie was better suited for the apocalypse, not me.

  By the time we were back on the road, Jason’s nerves were on edge. We still had plenty of time, but there was too much unknown about the world in front of us for us to feel secure in the fact that we’d make it on time.

  Dayton, on the other hand, was cool as a cucumber. He had traveled from the east. He hadn’t taken our exact route, but he was sure that we’d have very few problems. He and his people had squashed more than a few groups of cannibals, psychos, and the like that had risen since the outbreak. They’d made it their modus operandi as they made their way west in search of survivors. He felt sure we wouldn’t run into any humans looking to overpower us and take our supplies, not that I thought any could with the arsenal we had.

  Zombies, on the other hand, he couldn’t be sure about because, whereas their numbers were dropping, there were still plenty milling about that if we stumbled upon each other, they could easily create a horde that just might take us down.

  Chapter 31

  ~~~Samantha~~~

  We didn’t encounter a single horde until we were nearly at the naval base where we were supposed to meet the Germans. At seeing the horde that occupied New Norfolk City, we could understand why the German army thought our country was still crawling with zombies and why they weren’t inclined to believe in a vaccine.

  All of us could hear the moans and noises coming from the zombies plainly from our location high above the city. Smoke rose from multiple locations near the base as well. The Germans must have thought blowing them up would get rid of them. They didn’t realize that the noise would just lure more toward them.

  “Fuck me,” Jason said, looking at the sprawling city below us.

  New Norfolk was barely a city anymore, not that it was near the size of the sprawling one it was named after had been before the quakes and floods. Despite how obviously empty the shells of buildings were, the zombies flooded the streets. We wouldn’t be able to drive straight through town. The fires drew the attention of some, but others were far enough away that the sound of our vehicles would pull them toward us.

  “This’ll be fun,” Dayton said with a smile. The man had been itching for a fight or a challenge since we’d found him. He was about to get what he’d asked for that was for sure. I just hoped he knew how to get us through the city alive.

  “There isn’t a way around them?” I said, looking pleadingly at Jason, who turned to Dayton. That action didn’t reassure me. If he was turning to the other man that meant he didn’t have a plan. Jason always had a plan.

  “There is,” Dayton said, “but it’ll add hours to our trip if New Norfolk is as overrun as it looks. Either way, we’ll have to go through the city at some point. There is no other way to the port.” He surveyed our surroundings as he spoke while Jason and I looked at a map of the area.

  “Radio them again. Maybe the Germans will answer this time,” Dr. McNamara said. “Maybe they can help us. Give is a clue to a route that will get us to them safely.”

  I thought she was dreaming, but I couldn’t help hope with her.

  We’d been trying to reach the military group since entering the state, but either they were ignoring us, somehow not hearing us, or they were dead. We were hoping for the second. Dead wouldn’t be a bad thing, though. It might delay their attack. If they were ignoring us, then we were in trouble. That would mean they didn’t truly care about a vaccine or in helping us save our country, but then why delay? Why appear to trust that we have a vaccine?

  For the next twenty minutes, as Dayton and the others mulled over a plan, Jason tried and tried and tried to contact the base and the Germans, but no one responded.

  “Assholes,” Dayton said. His lip curled in disgust. “You’d think they’d want this vaccine before the disease reaches their shores. Want to help us get it to them. Do they want to wipe us off the map, is that it?” he asked no one.

  “Don’t go jumping to conclusions. We don’t know what has happened to them. For all we know, the zombies overran them,” Jason said. “Not that it matters. We can’t worry about them just yet. Yes, it’d be helpful to know if fighting through that horde and possibly losing our lives in the process would be worth it before we risk ourselves, but we’ll have to take it on faith that they are alive and waiting for us.”

  His words weren’t comforting.

  “Any other ideas on how we do this?” one of Dayton’s people asked.

  “I vote we go around the city as much as possible,” I said, pointing to the south side of New Norfolk where the horde appeared to be the thinnest. “It’ll take us a little longer, but if we hug the city tightly, we could probably make it halfway to the port before they completely overrun us.”

  “The sound of our vehicles will pull them toward us,” Dayton said.

  “We could hike it,” I suggested.

  “Too risky,” Dayton said.

  “We’ll move faster than them in the vehicles,” Jason said. “Plus our S.U.V.s should echo throughout the city. Maybe they’ll head for where we were rather than where we are. That might pull the zombies away from the port enough that by the time we get there, there won’t be that many of them. We’ll have a horde on our ass not long after we get there, though.”

  “We could do both,” someone suggested. I hadn’t had time to formally meet everyone from Dayton’s group who’d come with us nor did I remember their names.

  “Explain,” Dayton said.

  “Both ideas combined might work. What will really help get us there is a distraction. We need something here, here, and here, on the north and west side of town that is drawing most of their attention, so we won’t have that entire horde following after us as we move south,” the man added, pointing to places on the map.

  After a short discussion, we had a plan that didn’t involve walking to the base but could involve leaving people behind if it failed or if we needed further distr
actions.

  We would get as close to the city as possible without getting the attention of too many zombies. We wanted them to hear us. Wanted them making their way to our desired designations, but we wanted them doing so once we were on our way to our next stop not while we were setting up the distractions. The zombies were attracted to sound, so we were going to give them lots to listen to…we hoped. A running motor wasn’t necessarily loud, but hopefully, enough of them would drown out the sound of our vehicles. The occasional small bomb we were going to place near each stop would also help draw them away from us.

  At our first location, we got lucky. Three out of four cars we encountered had a full take of gas, or nearly that, and a battery that we could quickly jump off with one of ours. We lined them up and down an almost empty street, left them running with the doors open, and in a couple, a C.D. in the player blared. We hadn’t thought about using music as another lure until we’d found an older model car with a few C.D.s in the passenger seat. We quickly added it to the plan. A few blocks away, another group set up a bomb in a parking garage.

  The next location was a bit more time consuming as we almost couldn’t find enough C.D.s for all the vehicles we found, but again we got lucky in a nearby house where we found a thick case full of them. We placed that bomb in an empty mall.

  For the next few hours, we stopped every so often as we made our way around and down the south side of the city to set up those decoys. Fear and adrenaline had my body shaking the entire time. I had no idea how I was able to assist Jason and the others my hands shook so bad. My legs also did, but that didn’t seem to hinder my walking.

  The decoys worked well. The first explosion made me yell. I’d known it was coming, but the sound still took me by surprise. We’d been able to see the closest zombies move toward the sound of the cars, but the bomb got the attention of every single one in the city. Watching them turn en masse and look in our directions was pants-wetting terrifying.

  With all the noise, the sounds of our vehicles didn’t register to the zombies, so we encountered very few of them once we entered the outskirts of the city. Those we did, we dodged or ran over easily enough. The further we got into the city and the closer we got to the base was a different story. The horde got thicker, though they were mostly moving away from us, our movements got slower, and we had to shoot more of them than we wanted. I worried that the sounds of our guns coupled with the sounds of our vehicles were going to shift their attention away from the decoys and to us.

  We were seconds from having to get out of our vehicles and hoof it the horde was so thick when we heard a whistle overhead followed by a loud boom and a puff of smoke, flame, and debris coming from the direction of our first decoy. More came after it. The bombs that came from the naval base, and presumably from the Germans helped in drawing the horde away from us. They were also our first indication that there really was someone there. That eased some of my fear. We weren’t heading needlessly into danger.

  The bombs didn’t necessarily mean the Germans were there. Some other group could have shot it off and shot off the one that followed two minutes later, but the fact that someone was shooting meant the persons knew we were there and that they were helping us, and not out to kill us—at least not at that moment.

  The main gates of the base were strongly barricaded, becoming our next obstacle.

  “They knew we were coming, right?” one of the doctors asked.

  “They sure as hell aren’t acting like it,” Jason replied. “Is there any way through that?” He turned to Dayton as he asked the question.

  “There should be. I wouldn’t think they’d block it to the point that they couldn’t get in and out,” Dayton said, scanning the area.

  “I don’t think they are the least bit worried about coming in and out through this entrance,” Jason said.

  “Probably not, but surely they’d have left us a way inside,” Dr. McNamara said.

  “We can’t plow through them. We risk doing too much damage to our own vehicles. We’ll have to take the time to remove the barricade. Pray the zombies don’t overrun us while doing so or while we’re resetting it,” Dayton said.

  “Simple,” one of Dayton’s people said. A few chuckled.

  Jason, Dayton, and some of the others exited our convoy and began moving the metal fencing, sawhorses, and military vehicles that blocked our way onto the base. The rest of us gave cover fire. The sound of them working and our gunshots quickly drew the attention of the zombies in the area.

  We barely squeezed our vehicles through the gap our people created with them quickly trying to put the barricade back in place behind us before a horde was upon us. More zombies than we were comfortable with managed to follow us onto the base. Luckily, they were chasing the noise and not paying attention to the people. We didn’t waste time trying to kill them all—just the ones who got too close.

  Once we were on base, our radio blew up with the voice of a man giving us directions to which building they had occupied. We followed those directions to a tee. There weren’t a huge number of zombies on our ass, but there were more than was safe for us to get out of our vehicles until absolutely necessary.

  No one showed themselves to help us in person. They did continue to give air coverage, but most of the coverage was via bombs they shot into the city. A sniper or two picked off some of the ones following us, but those zombies weren’t their primary target. The hordes beyond the base’s gates were more important and dangerous.

  The building the voice on the radio instructed us to go to, looked toward the ocean. It was a wide, long building whose front walk led to a pier and boats. The building appeared empty. No one moved in or around it that we could see even after we pulled up in front of it, got out of our vehicles, and started running toward the main entrance.

  The Germans waited until we were literally banging on their door to show themselves.

  Chapter 32

  ~~~Samantha~~~

  Everything that happened after we got to the building happened so fast that I was in what I would describe as a solitary confinement cell before I could catch my breath. Zombies had been rushing the building and us seconds after we exited the vehicles. They must have overridden the barricade that we’d hastily reassembled.

  The only way the Germans could have done what they did to us was because our attention was on killing the creatures and protecting the doctors. In our distraction, we hadn’t immediately understood that the people helping us were dividing us, disarming us, and taking us prisoner.

  I was screaming for Jason. I’d lost him in the crowd of people and zombies fighting to get into the building. One minute he was holding my hand and the next, he was gone, and a man was shoving me into a six-by-six room.

  I understood the need for decontamination, which was my first thought when the door shut behind me, but as I stood there, bent at the waist, trying to catch my breath, and no one came to explain things, I got worried, then I got scared. The room had no windows, a cot with no pillow or blanket, a sink, and a toilet. I was sure I could hear people hollering outside of the room, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. As soon as I had my breath, I was pounding on the door and screaming for someone to answer me, for them to give me answers, to tell me where Jason was, but no one replied.

  Terror washed over me then. My body began to shake. Had the zombie’s gotten into the building? Was Jason alive? Was he bit? Did he know where I was? Was I permanently locked inside the cell? How long would it take me to die in there? Was I bit?

  No, I wasn’t. I searched myself thoroughly and didn’t find so much as a scratch. Once I was sure a zombie hadn’t bitten me, I remember that I’d had the vaccine. Even if I had been bitten, I wouldn’t turn. None of us would. If the Germans were keeping me in the cell as a precaution, they’d let me out soon, wouldn’t they?

  The thought that they would possibly let me out didn’t relieve the panic slowly building in me. No matter what I told myself, my body felt trapped. A pani
c attack quickly came over me, and I started to hyperventilate. I beat on the door, screamed until I was hoarse, and nearly passed out before a voice came over a speaker I couldn’t see, telling me that everything was going to be all right.

  I didn’t believe the voice. I was in a fetal position against the door at that point, and I was banging on it with all my waning strength.

  All I could think was that I had to get out.

  I had to get out.

  I was going to die if I didn’t get out.

  I would starve to death.

  I would waste away to nothing, never seeing Jason again.

  My death would be slow. It would be painful. I would suffer beyond my wildest imaginings.

  I had to get out.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I was suffocating.

  “Please, calm down. You have nothing to fear from us,” the voice kept saying, but I wasn’t listening.

  “I can’t. You have to let me out. I can’t,” I said in reply, crying, feeling as if I wasn’t breathing, and still beating on the door.

  The room was too small. It was closing in on me. It would smoosh me at any moment. I had to get out before it did. Could they see the walls moving…see the ceiling coming down on me? I didn’t want to die that way. I didn’t want to die alone.

  Slowly I stopped banging on the door. My arms felt too heavy to lift. I stopped screaming. I ceased begging them to let me out. I’d lost my voice. It didn’t matter. I was dying. The room was running out of oxygen. I was…

  My cell door opened seconds before everything around me went dark, and I passed out.

  I woke sometime later feeling utterly relaxed, calm, mellow, high. I’d never been high before, but I thought what I was feeling had to be what it felt like to be stoned. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel trapped. I didn’t feel scared. I felt nothing.