Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

  He scurried down the steps and saw blood all over the living room and kitchen, and Rollie’s lifeless body lying on the floor. A harsh smell of chemicals struck his nose and made him wince.

  “What the—” he started.

  “Kid turned sometime during the night,” Charlie said. “Sarah found him out here this morning, and he attacked her.”

  “Shit, where is she?” Jack asked, panic in his voice.

  “She’s in the shower,” Charlie said, pulling back on Jack’s arm. “Leave her be for a minute, Jack. She’s not bit, and there’s no new scratches that we could find. Her flesh wound is bandaged, and I didn’t see any fresh blood on it, though he did get his blood on her. I poured some bleach on her to rinse it off, and she’s scrubbing clean now.”

  Jack relaxed a little, but he still needed to get to the bathroom and see his wife.

  “Dad, let go,” he said.

  “Jack, listen for a minute. I think this confirms our worst fears, son. You are infected. For whatever reason, you aren’t going crazy like the others. But to the best of my knowledge, and Sarah agrees, the only exposure Rollie had was when your blood got on him yesterday during the fight. It hit him in the face, near his eyes and mouth—easy ways for this infection to get into the body.”

  Jack took this all in at once, feeling a heavy weight settle on him. He could be a danger to everyone he came in contact with, including his father and his wife. He pulled his arm away from his dad’s grip.

  “We don’t know that, though, for sure,” he said. “I mean, this kid could have been in contact with anyone yesterday. Everything we’ve seen and heard says infection to symptoms is about twelve hours, but it’s not like there’s an egg timer waiting to go off. Everyone is different. He’s young, healthy; maybe it took longer with him.”

  “Son, that kid hardly ever left this mountain. You’re the only people he’s had contact with other than his no-good stepdad and his buddies. And I don’t think any of them were infected. I think it’s best that we assume you’re at least a carrier for whatever this is, even if you don’t go crazy with it.”

  “Okay, so then what do we do?”

  Charlie looked around the cabin. “Well, I think Sarah and I will bunk in your trailer while we try to sort out our next move. It will be easier than trying to sanitize this place. You stay in here, and we try to get more information.”

  A noise from behind Charlie made them both turn toward the hallway. Sarah stood in the doorway, dressed in fresh clothes, her hair wet and hanging loosely around her face. She had a white trash bag in her hands.

  “My clothes,” she said, handing them to Charlie. He took the bag and set it down by the rear door.

  “Sarah, I’m so sorry,” Jack said. “I had no idea this would happen.”

  “We should have isolated him same as we did with you, just to be safe. It’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah, but he could have killed you!”

  “But he didn’t. And you’re still alive, so there’s two things to be grateful for. But we have to be careful going forward. Unfortunately, no snuggling for a while.”

  “Yeah, no necking at the drive-in for you two,” Charlie interjected. “Look, I’m going to go outside and move some dead bodies. Sarah, please toss me the work boots from my bedroom; I’m leaving my shoes in the trash bag. I’m headed out the back door. Jack, you move the kid outside, sop up as much of the blood as you can, and then get that bleach bottle and scrub down the floor in the kitchen and push it out the back door. Once you’re outside, Sarah and I can pack up what we need to, and we’ll head out the front and set up shop in the trailer. Once we get all this shit cleaned up and we’re sure that she and I aren’t infected, we’ll sort out what comes next. Okay?”

  Jack nodded. Charlie looked at Sarah.

  “Okay?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  “All right, let’s get it done.”

  Sarah crossed back into the bathroom, and Jack heard the blow dryer fire up. He stepped carefully to avoid the blood on the floor, grabbed another trash bag from the sink, and shook it open. He lifted the kid’s torso by the collar of his coat and slipped the bag over his head, the bullet wound immediately draining blood into it. He rolled the body over, away from the existing pools of blood, and with his arms under the kid’s armpits, he dragged it outside. He stopped when he was about twenty-five feet away from the cabin and adjusted the trash bag, pulling it lower, over the kid’s shoulders and down to about his elbows, then he laid the body down in the dirt.

  He looked over to see his father dragging Leland’s body to a clearing and laying it down next to Nick’s body. Crows were following him closely. They settled down on the body and started picking at it as soon as Charlie stepped away.

  “The crows love these guys,” Charlie said when he saw Jack looking at them. “Can’t get enough. They’re all over Tim too. Other scavengers got at them overnight. They ain’t a pretty sight, that’s for sure.”

  A few crows circled close to Rollie’s body, one even landing on his chest and inspecting the dead teenager, then they all flew over to the other dead men and joined in the scavenging. Even the birds knew there was something wrong with Rollie.

  Jack went back in and filled the sink with hot water, and then poured in a lot more bleach than the manufacturer recommended for cleaning. He soaked up as much of the blood as he could with paper towels, discarding them in the bag with Sarah’s clothes and his dad’s shoes. Then he took a mop, soaked it in the sink and swabbed up the remainder. The blood disappeared as the caustic liquid split the cells, draining them of their red color. He wrung the mop out in a bucket, and since he wanted to avoid getting the contaminated mop in the sink, he used a large plastic cup to spread more water on the floor and continued mopping.

  Confident that nothing could survive the extra strong bleach mixture, he decided to do some additional cleaning. He found an empty spray bottle under the sink and filled it with the liquid, topping it off with a little extra bleach. He sprayed the bottoms of his shoes, grabbed yet another trash bag, and moved into the living room. He took the bloody linens and pillow from the couch and stuffed them in the bag, then sprayed and wiped down every surface he could think of that the kid may have touched. He dumped the trash bag by the body, grabbed another clean rag, and wiped everything down again.

  Satisfied he’d made everything as sterile as possible, he called Sarah out of the bedroom.

  “Okay, I think I’ve done all I can do out here. You should be good to go.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” she said. He could tell by her face that she’d been crying. It was the same look he saw when her parents were killed in a car crash a few years earlier. She’d put on a strong façade, but just under the surface, she was grieving.

  “We’ll sort this out,” he said. “One way or another, we’ll fix this.”

  She gave him a grim smile. “I want nothing more than just to grab you and never let go,” she said. “To hell with the consequences.”

  “I know, babe, I do too. But this is the right thing to do. If I did infect Rollie, any contact with me is potentially dangerous. Hell, just breathing around me might be deadly.”

  “No, your dad and I talked about that. We’d all be infected already if that was the case. It must be contact with fluids.”

  “Good point. Well, let me get out of here so you can get your stuff moved.”

  Jack stepped out the back door and looked over at the body of the teenager that he’d inadvertently killed. It was still undisturbed, the crows still giving it a wide berth.

  28

  Lake Fontana, Nantahala National Forest, Tennessee

  March 28th

  Deena didn’t have to peek over the wall of the deer stand; she only had to wait for the screams to stop. She’d seen a lot of zombie films and had even read some indie authors who wrote about them, so she knew, or at least suspected, that once you were bitten, it was only a matter of time. She didn’t want to be a
lone and would welcome almost anyone to ride this out with. However, she wasn’t willing to take the risk of them being infected or being seen by the infected.

  She would have to do this alone, but first she had to get her pack. It didn’t take long for her to slip down, retrieve her pack, and rush back to the tree stand.

  She pulled her pack in front of her and started to organize what she had. Being on the road with Grandpa meant that she’d spent a lot of nights out under the stars. She had a good fixed-blade knife as well as fishing line, hooks, and rubber worms, so she knew that she wouldn’t starve after her energy bars ran out. She also had two changes of clothes that, luckily, were just washed, as well as a light jacket. The only thing she was remiss on would be her hiking boots, which she could see in her mind’s eye in the semi’s sleeper cab. It was too risky to go back to the rig to hide. The only place she knew around here was their destination, the newly created tanker farm three miles up the road. It was fenced with two small buildings, one an office/guard shack and, the other, a small maintenance shed in the center. The rest was nothing but fuel tankers and reefer units that somebody suddenly decided to collect and store just over a week ago.

  Deena didn’t know who or why; all she knew was that there was safety and possibly someone who she could get help from. She cursed herself again for getting caught stealing. The punishment wasn’t having to spend the summer with her grandpa. That was fun and something she loved to do. The real punishment was having her phone taken away for the summer, which left her with no way to talk to any of her friends or call for help for at least another month. They probably think that I’m dead.

  A scream from a newly captured person ripped through the air, and she couldn’t help but wonder if any of her friends were still alive.

  She waited until there hadn’t been a scream or any other unnatural sound for over a half hour before she peeked over the edge again. She didn’t want to spend the night up here, and it was going to take a couple of hours to get where she needed to be. That meant she had to get moving now.

  It looked clear from every angle, so she crept over to the opening alongside the tree trunk and put her feet on the ladder before she paused. Once she started down, she was committed. If they saw her, then going back up would be suicide when they surrounded the base and kept her trapped until she starved to death.

  Worse yet, they might know how to climb ladders—of course, she didn’t know how that could be since they seemed to run at full speed toward everything. Rushing down the ladder would make too much noise and attract attention. Going too slow would leave her exposed up high for too long. She had to make her descent slow, purposeful, and steady. Smooth and quiet; her life depended on it. She thought about her grandpa and wondered if he was one of them now. Or, was he simply…dead after losing all of his blood?

  Dang it, I can’t think about it. Just move. She wiped the water from her eyes and pinched some snot from her nose before giving a halfhearted snort at how disgusting she was. For some reason, it made her smirk and she flicked it off her fingers, wiping the hand on her jeans before taking one final breath and heading down the tree.

  She swept her head back and forth, scanning the underbrush between the trees. The distant sounds of screaming sounded from across the lake, so she went in the opposite direction, which was where the highway curved around the lake. Her feet met the ground, and she dropped into a crouch before heading toward a narrow deer path. Ten feet in, and she paused to listen, just like Grandpa taught her when they hunted. Fifteen feet, thirty…at fifty she pulled into the brush and scanned both directions.

  She heard movement, so she dropped down, keeping a layer of brush between her and the path. She felt trapped with the brush surrounding her, but the movement sounded too close to reposition.

  The sound of running feet suddenly pounded the ground around her. There was a pack of them, and they slapped the dirt as if they were attempting to drive their feet right through the ground following her path from the deer stand.

  She flinched when a half-naked man pounded past her hiding spot on the trail, quickly followed by two more. They didn’t make a sound other than the slap, slap, slap of their feet and the heavy panting of their stressed lungs. Whether they took the path by chance or they were tracking her, she didn’t know. They didn’t seem to be taking time to sniff the ground or look for footprints; they were moving too fast.

  She froze. Breathing… They’re still alive. What that implied, other than the fact that they weren’t zombies, she didn’t know, but it sucked the strength right out of her knees. Maybe they can think?

  I can’t worry about that now; I have to get away.

  She started down the path, following the creatures that she’d thought were pursuing her, keeping her ears and eyes tuned for any disturbances. She could see a band of sunlight ahead and knew it was the two-lane highway that she and Grandpa had followed to get to the tanker farm. The highway would stick mainly to the woods from here on, with the exception of the Lakeview Drive Bridge that spanned over the northern end of Watauga Lake. A mile and a half north of the lake, and almost a mile off the highway, was the tanker farm. She could make it; she knew it, even if she had to swim to get around the bridge.

  She hugged the tree line as tightly as she could and stopped every twenty yards or so to listen and search with her eyes. At first she was getting tired of being so cautious, but then she saw a couple of groups early enough to step into the woods to avoid being spotted. The only exception was the one time they suddenly appeared from around a bend, but she was able to drop into the grass before they noticed her. She doubted there would have been another deer stand to save her butt this time around.

  She saw that she’d been right about the bridge upon her arrival. There seemed to be a constant flow of infected around the area. Everyone who had fled on foot from the cabins would have had to cross here, and it looked like they paid for that commonality with their lives. She was wrong on having to swim, though. The steel work under the structure looked like it could be navigated pretty easily, and there was thick brush, with the exception of one small area right up to the abutment.

  She was starting to get a feel for these creatures or people.

  People. Were they really still people? They were alive, so maybe that meant they still had rights. She almost chuckled. That would be just like us, to worry about the rights of things that want nothing more than to kill and infect us.

  Some of the infected ran all the time, with blood and puss seeping from their eyes and a frothy pinkish vomit on their chin and down their fronts. The others just wandered aimlessly, as if they were waiting for something to spur them into action. Sadly, Deena knew what that something was, and she wasn’t a bit happy with it.

  She skirted the small clearing when she spotted an opportune moment and huddled down next to the bridge abutment. When the right time came, she made her move and slipped under the bridge and up into the lattice work.

  It was cool and dark under the paved path above, which only allowed the sounds of scraping feet to reach her ears now and again. She’d reached the halfway point without any issues, and then she heard the sound of a small motor from underneath her.

  “Pssst. Girly, down here. Drop down into the boat, and I’ll take you back to my cabin. They haven’t found it yet,” a man said in an almost pleading voice.

  The sound of it made her blood freeze before she even looked at him. He was just a little too eager to get a teenage girl into his boat, and she didn’t trust it. This was the kind of man she’d been warned about.

  “Shhhh,” Deena said. “I’ll be fine. Just go, or they’ll see me.”

  “That’s why you should come with me, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe.” It wasn’t the words as much as how he said them, but they made Deena feel as if she might be safer with the infected.

  She thought about her options, Grandpa’s 1911 being one of them; however, she was in no position to go digging in her pack. She still had the .22 semi-auto
clipped to her waistband, but her grandpa’s warning about how that might not kill a determined man without a lot of shots rang through her head. The last thing she needed was every infected from the lake cabins coming down on her while she was trapped under a bridge. When she weighed her options, she’d actually prefer it over crawling into the boat with this creep.

  Deena looked up and saw shadows of heads trying to peer over the sides. Suddenly, one of them plunged with a splash into the lake below. Soon, another body fell, and another. All of them sank, except for one who managed to grab the edge of the boat. More started to fall. She turned back to the man and saw that he had an oar and was trying to hit her with it to knock her out from under the bridge.

  She wrapped her legs and an arm tight around one of the supports and pulled out her gun, showing it to the man, who didn’t seem too concerned about the infected that were surrounding his boat.

  “Good, you got a gun. I need a gun,” he said as the oar struck her on her knee, almost causing her to fall. She couldn’t wait any longer. This man had his chance to leave her alone, and in spite of her refusal and the infected, he just wouldn’t. He swung again with the oar, and she flinched away to avoid another strike, the pain in her knee still fresh in her mind.

  In one smooth motion, she turned and fired toward the back of the boat, hitting the plastic gas can. Except for the man whose ear she blew off earlier that day, she’d never shot an actual person and didn’t know if she could. But she could shoot a boat. She fired off six more rounds, knowing that the smaller bullets allowed her magazine to hold many more rounds than the 1911 did.

  The man glared at her and dropped the oar.