by Brown, TW
More than once that winter, as they scraped and fought to survive, each of them wondered if they had made a rash decision. If not for a month of one blizzard after the other preventing them from doing anything or going anyplace, they probably would have gone back.
At that moment, Mel was wondering if maybe it would not be a terrible idea to turn back now. Their original reason to return to Palm Springs was with the hope that their friends and family would still be there. After what they’d seen, not to mention the fact that a year had passed, none of them held any real hope that there would be much of anything left should they make it.
Kyle stirred beside her and she reached over to touch him. Her mind mulled over what Glenn had shared after he’d gone to escort Ann to where she could clean up and change. Cynthia had taken it far better than she would have if it had been Kyle. When the woman returned clean and wearing a set of loose-fitting sweats…nobody had said a word. Kyle had gone and changed after making sure to tell Mel to keep the woman away so he could have his privacy.
They sat down a little while later to eat and it was Ann asking them all sorts of questions. “Where are you from?” “How have you managed to keep the baby safe?” “Where are you headed?” “Have you seen any other survivors?” Glenn had spent the entire meal staring at his plate and not speaking, but Cynthia did not appear bothered in the least.
After dinner, the woman had never been much more than a few feet away from Xander. Xander didn’t seem to mind all the new attention and more than once, Ann was on the floor playing with him and his toys. She could not say why exactly, but it had Mel uneasy the entire time. She watched, and while this strange woman seemed to smile and coo and treat her son well, there was just…something.
It didn’t help that the woman had donned a pair of very dark sunglasses. Of course it seemed reasonable on the surface. That missing eye and the scar did not look appealing and would have probably scared the baby. Still, she hated not being able to see the woman’s eyes. She was just certain that, if she could, she would eventually see past what she knew was a façade of pleasantry.
With a sigh, Mel closed her eyes. She needed to get some sleep. They were going to scout the area again tomorrow for any supplies. Cynthia would be staying behind because of the injury to her leg. And that was the other thing; they had never found the person responsible. Somebody was out there and they were dangerous.
Letting the sounds of the others flow over her, Mel sought peace so she could fall asleep. She was trying to clear her mind when a thought hit her…hard.
She’d heard everybody. She knew all their night sounds as well as she knew their voices. But there had been something missing: the baby! Not only that, but she did not hear anything unusual. That meant she was not hearing Ann.
Leaping to her feet, Mel reached for the hammock with a feeling of dread. She could see nothing, but she already knew what she would find.
Xander was gone.
***
Chad was on his feet and sprinting across the park before Dustin realized what was happening. Scrambling up and after the man, Dustin made it about half way before his pace began to slow. He had no idea what Chad was planning, but it was clear that the two of them would not stand a chance against so many of the cursed abominations.
Pausing, he looked skyward. “God, I have no idea what your plan is in all this. Maybe we just got too big for our britches. In any case, I just want to ask you real quick for some sort of help. What I am about to do is likely going to lead to my death. I know that I am a sinner, and I pray that your promises of forgiveness are real. I commit my soul to you here and ask that, if I must die here and now, please make it a quick death.”
He took off after Chad at a full sprint which, for a man of his size was not too terribly fast. As he saw Chad now within a dozen or so yards from the trailing end of the zombie mob, he quickly added, “And please watch over my friend…Amen.”
Just as Chad slammed into the first small cluster of zombies, the front door to the house flew open and a girl stepped out onto the porch. Dustin instantly recognized Chad’s daughter. She was holding her arms out at each side and screaming at the top of her lungs. Dustin felt his heart sink. They had been too late; blood poured down both arms and could be seen even from this distance dripping off in rivulets.
For Chad, the scene became almost draped in a haze and moved in slow motion. It was as if he could see every single drop of blood that came from his daughter’s arms. Each one seemed suspended in the air for a moment before plummeting to earth with an audible splat that he could feel and hear despite the improbability. The moans and cries of the undead were muted and only Ronni’s scream pierced his senses.
Chad hit the first zombies like a truck. His blade cut away the left third of the head. He crashed into a group of four and went to the ground in a jumble but simply rolled and came back up to his feet. The crowd between him and his daughter was about twenty deep. The rational voice in his mind told him he would never reach her in time. He silenced it and slashed wildly.
Up on the porch, Ronni was moving away from the stairs as zombies stumbled up in pursuit. Her eyes met those of her father’s and she mouthed the words “I’m sorry, Daddy…I’m so sorry” just as hands clutched at her and she was pulled down by a group of five.
Dustin launched himself at the rear of the zombie hoard sending bodies every which way. The zombies’ lack of coordination worked in his favor and several fell like a twisted parody of dominoes. Chad snapped to his senses enough to realize that an opening had been cleared for the most part. He charged into that opening.
A few zombies remained between him and his daughter. Her scream of pain drove him forward with unnatural speed and strength. At some point, he’d lost his weapons and now resorted to grabbing bodies and tossing them aside. Meanwhile, Dustin had regained his feet and charged through the closed front door of the home. Screams of terror came from within, but Chad heard only the cries of his daughter and grabbed the last two zombies that were on top of her by the tops of their heads. He slammed them together and hurled them over the porch railing where they landed on the gathered crowd like inept stage divers.
“Daddy!” a little girl’s voice sobbed.
Chad looked down and felt his heart disintegrate. His daughter was covered in blood and filth. Her eyes were shiny with tears; the deep brown almost looking golden as the sun hit her face. He knelt and took her hands in his. With a single motion, he scooped her into his arms and turned.
Zombies were regaining their feet and those that had not been knocked over were trying to climb over their downed comrades. Chad made for the open front door of the house. He took two steps when he stumbled just a bit and came to an awkward halt. He looked down at his daughter who was still staring up at him through the tears.
Her eyes.
They were normal!
***
“I don’t think we will ever know what happened,” George said in a whisper.
Jody had already made it clear that he could not handle a noise much louder than that the moment his eyes opened and Selina squealed with delight and relief. He had hugged her back once he had been able to take his hands from his temples.
“Why kill his entire crew and burn the place to the ground?” Selina repeated what Kat was signing from beside Jody’s bed where neither woman had moved from except for quick bathroom breaks for the past several days.
“And who were all the bikers?” Danny added.
The discussion was one that would run in circles for the next several days. The entire time, Danny mulled over and sifted through everything that he’d seen after cutting the head off of Remar Jenks.
He had pulled Jody from the burning home and been relieved to discover his friend was alive. He had backtracked to an old farm house just up the road a short distance. After making sure that the place was clear, he had returned to the now fully engulfed development. Many of the houses were starting to collapse and that is how he discovered the motor
cycles. There had been a dozen bikes parked in the southwest corner of the development under a copse of trees that were now in the process of becoming giant candles.
Gauging the situation and hoping his guess was right, Danny rushed in and checked the first chopper he came to. Throwing his leg over, he kick started the hog and roared out with flames seeming to chase him all the way through the open entry gate and back onto the road.
He sat across the road for a few hours while the place continued to burn and waited to see if anybody came out. Other than the few zombies that managed to stumble out in varying stages of being burnt to a crisp, nothing stirred from within the inferno. Danny had not even noticed the approaching clouds until the first rain drops fell on his head.
He remained on his vigil until the storm broke open with a fury that actually made it almost impossible to see more than a few yards because of the torrential rain. Coupled with the smoke that now came in hissing protest, there was no reason to remain.
He returned to where he had left Danny propped up in a musty, moldy, mildewed bed. He watched over his friend and tried repeatedly to rouse him with no luck.
The rain continued well into the night. Danny kept his vigil; alternating between checking on Jody and making sure that nothing nasty was coming for them in the dilapidated farm house. The next morning, he rode the chopper back to Cash. Jody was still out of it and he’d had to rig it so that they were basically tied together. He knew it was extremely dangerous, but he also knew that he could not carry the man on his back the eight or ten miles they needed to go.
The big bike was heavy, awkward, and ran funny like it had molasses mixed in with the fuel. It would rumble and sputter and then cough with a burst of black smoke that spewed from the tailpipe, but it made it home.
After Jody had been seen to, Danny spilled everything he knew, which really was not all that much when it came down to it. A few people grumbled that it all seemed too convenient for Remar to end up dead and the first one that did so in Danny’s earshot was still rubbing his jaw.
“My friend almost died going out there thinking that we were trying to save that piece of crap!” Danny roared as he stood over the man with clenched fists.
Thankfully—for the man on the ground, not Danny—George was on hand to calm the angry soldier down. That night as Danny sat next to Jody’s bed, his mind went back over everything from the events of the last part of that peculiar twenty-four hours. He was certain that something was brewing out there.
Those bikers were not just some random encounter for Remar and his group. He’d driven through the burnt down development before wheeling it back to Cash. He could not be certain, but he was almost willing to swear that he had seen the remnants of a secured area. Somebody was setting up a home or a base in that place. Also, that night while the fire burned and battled with the rain in its losing war, he was almost certain that he’d heard what sounded like a bunch of firearms being fired at once—an ammunition cook off would be the likely culprit.
Danny sat by Jody’s bed all that first night…and the nights that followed. He refused to leave and practically sprinted there and back any time he had to use the restroom. On the fourth or fifth day, Selina insisted that he go take a shower. He agreed only if she promised to stay with Jody until he got back.
He helped spoon mashed plates of unidentifiable stuff with the consistency of baby food into Jody’s mouth. He helped change out IV bags and even became proficient at sterilizing the old one and refilling it with the solution that Selina and another woman said he needed.
On the eleventh day, Jody opened his eyes. The first words that he heard were from his friend Danny.
“Sergeant Bill Pitts is alive.”
18
Geeks on Two Wheels
Kevin turned to his group. They looked anxious, even a little scared. After the last several days, he could hardly blame them. Already they had lost five of their numbers. More than once, Kevin wondered if he was doing the right thing in bringing these children with him.
The journey to Chicago had looked much easier on the map. However, they just had not planned for so much urban sprawl. They had stayed well south on their approach and, as it was, had not actually reached Chicago proper when they suffered the first of their losses. Yet, Kevin pressed on. He had made up his mind…or so he thought.
Kevin took them north all the way to Interstate 90—the Indiana Toll Road according to the few signs that remained. With Lake Michigan to their right, they found a huge sporting goods store. Kevin had almost bypassed it due to the exterior damage. However, Catie had taken a small group in and come out in such a hurry that Kevin waited for an army of zombies to emerge like ants from a kicked anthill.
“Not a weapon to be had…but the bicycles and camping gear are untouched!” she announced.
They spent the day equipping themselves and making sure that every single bicycle was ready for the road. Kevin was very thorough in making sure that they would be able to repair or replace anything that might go wrong. By the time they were back on the road, everybody was feeling as if Christmas had come.
Kevin had not realized how ragged the children’s footwear was until one of them came up with a pair of hiking boots and asked if she could have them or if they were too expensive. It had taken him a moment to actually understand that the concept of their reality had perhaps not sunk in entirely.
He gathered everybody around and told them that they could take anything they needed if they could pull it in his or her own trailer. He cautioned them that they would be needing food and that they would be taking only what they could carry as individuals.
When they resumed their journey, Aleah had come up beside him. “So, are you sure about Chicago?”
“I think the city itself is probably a gold mine,” Kevin said. “But I don’t think we are going to make it that far. The maps really do not show how dense the area was with people. I guess I never thought it out.”
“Wait…am I hearing this correctly? The great mind of Kevin Dreon has made a…mistake?”
“Happens to the best of us,” he said with a shrug.
And so as they passed through the almost completely destroyed and burnt remains of Gary, Indiana, Kevin kept them on Interstate 90, where they passed what had to have been some sort of massive fuel depository. None of the huge tanks remained, and the ground had a glassy sheen to it as well as a lingering smell of fuel even after all this time.
A huge neighborhood just to the west had been utterly wiped out by the resulting fire. Kevin could not begin to wrap his mind around the size of the blaze that had to have burned for perhaps months.
They passed another, and then another tanker farm. Each having vanished in what had to have been a hellish conflagration. Each causing utter destruction to the surrounding landscape.
They’d finally crossed a large lake and eventually passed through what had once been a massive toll gate complex that spanned the interstate. It looked like the military had done its best to make some sort of stand here. Leading up to the toll gate, the litter of corpses was horrifying. It was so bad that they had to actually leave the highway and travel along an access road that ran parallel.
And just that suddenly, they cleared a wooded area and discovered themselves on the Indiana/Illinois State Line and an expansive neighborhood that looked like it went on forever. This community sat across from what one sign proclaimed to be ‘Eggers Woods Forest Preserve’.
“This is the rally point,” Kevin had announced.
He had divided them into groups. He took one, Aleah took one, Heather and Deanna took one and Sean was paired with Trent. They each were given twelve kids in their detail. They had been assigned a specific street and told to search one block at a time and return to the rally point with the gathered spoils and await the others.
Looking down his street, Kevin saw very little activity. A few zombies could be seen, but not many. And considering that they were looking at an area with perhaps thousands of h
omes packed in tightly amongst one another, this was exactly the blessing he’d hoped for.
Sure, there would still be a few zombies to deal with, but the ratio of houses to zombies looked to be very favorable. After one more lecture about being cautious and sticking together with your assigned group, Kevin wished everybody luck, kissed Aleah, and headed to his street. He would begin at the intersection of ‘E 112th ST’ and ‘S Avenue B’ according to the surprisingly intact signage.
The first obstacle was a five car mess. It looked as if everybody had tried to exit the neighborhood at the exact same time. One car had the remains of the driver jutting through the windshield. The blood had long since been washed away, leaving a barely visible stain. This was proof that the undead had no interest in eating an already deceased individual. There were signs of trauma from the accident, but not so much as a single bite mark.
Kevin chose to go down the left side of the street and then come up the right side so that they would end their search closest to the park. The first house was a disappointment. It appeared that the place had likely been up for sale because it was empty except for some now moldy furniture in the living room obviously meant as a display.
The second house was picked pretty clean as was the next few. Kevin was beginning to doubt his logic. He had simply assumed that a majority of the former residents would have evacuated to an area shelter or FEMA center. The likelihood that the zombie population in this sort of area would be fairly dense would have dissuaded most looters…or at least that was his logic going in.
The long row of brick homes was starting to look like a bust by the time he reached the sixth home on the street. It looked just like all the others. Graffiti scrawled on the front, a busted front window. But when he opened the front door (not all of the homes had intact front doors, but this one just happened to), he saw a stack of boxes just down the entry hall. They had been knocked over and some of their contents had spilled on the floor.