A Thousand Miles to Nowhere

by David Curfiss

  They clumsily dodged trees growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk and stepped through thick rows of shrubs blooming sporadically throughout the streets. Street lights were broken and blocked their path, forcing them to lift uncooperative body parts. Then, finally, Matt heard the babble of water as it flowed gently through the woods ahead.

  Tara’s head perked up as she realized the spring was less than a hundred feet away. She looked over at Steve and smiled, then somehow found the strength to sprint-hobble.

  “Oh God, it’s flowing,” she cried out as she began to strip.

  Her pale flesh was exposed as she stepped, naked, into the mountain water. She felt a rush of adrenaline dump into her veins and flip a switch that made her feel immediately alive as the water splashed across her skin. Goosepimples formed and hardened her flesh. She gently wiped at her wounds and rubbed the crusted blood off. She gulped large handfuls of water into her dry, stale mouth, and released the loudest sigh of relief afterward. She laughed at her enjoyment. It was like being a kid in a bubble bath for the first time.

  With a large, two-handed scoop of water, Tara splashed her face and dragged her fingers through her hair. She shook off the excess water and watched as Matt and Steve stripped a few yards away, leaving her to her solitude.

  They finished up and walked back to Main Street where a dilapidated pie and ice cream shop sat alone and empty, surrounded by the broken buildings of an old world. The pie shop was made of logs and stained with brown shellac instead of paint. The windows were boarded up and the awning had collapsed years ago, but the store’s sign still sat proudly above the windows—MOM’S.

  They entered through the red screen door, secured tightly against the frame. Matt had made sure of it the last time they had used MOM’S as an outpost a few weeks prior to the outbreak at Camp Oliver.

  It was the one structure in all the town capable of supporting the weight of the new world. Matt felt the shop refused to collapse out of pride—the last building, the sole survivor of war standing sad but proud.

  Matt dropped his pack and unloaded what gear he had. It wasn’t much, but it would do for one more night. Tara leaned against a porthole in the boarded-up window frame. It was heavily rotted on the inside from water that leaked through the unsecure seams. Bits of wood splintered and crumbled and fell to the hardwood floor.

  Steve sat against the colonial brick wall that had an odd-looking flat burner stove against it. It was the only space on the interior that had brick floors. He kicked off his boots.

  “You know, I’ve always wondered what it would’ve been like to use one of these.” Steve rubbed his hand over the surface of the stove. “You think if we put some of those wood logs in it, it would fire up?”

  Matt looked over at him and smiled. “Not sure, man. We could try. Might warm the place up a bit more, though.”

  Steve laughed. The summer heat was more than enough warmth, even in the mountains. “Yeah, might not be a good idea.”

  Matt tossed Steve the sleeping pad, then tossed Tara his sleeping bag. He set his empty pack against the wall, leaned against it, and closed his eyes. Sleep hit him without delay.

  Tara stared out the small porthole and looked over all the collapsed structures.

  “Ruins of a past world,” she whispered.

  Her mind lost itself deep in her thoughts. She daydreamed of being a child before the outbreak. Her creative mind installed fictitious memories of a family she was too young to remember. She pretended to walk down Main Street with her mother, holding her hand, on their way to get an apple crumb pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. She could almost taste it. The thought caused her salivate. Afterward, they would get into a car and drive down the winding mountain roads to their home on the beach, where they would put on swimsuits and run and play in the waves until their lips turned blue. It felt good to be normal, even if it was pretend.

  Behind her, both Steve and Matt had begun to snore. They looked peaceful, and it made her wonder if they had dreams, too.

  The pain was severe. Steve’s ankle was tight with pressure like a heavy weight being pressed down on it. It moved up his leg and into his chest like a rolling boulder. He shot up as his leg was pulled off the sleep sack and his body raked across the splintery wooden floor. Sharp nails pinched deep into his skin, ripping through his flesh and allowing blood to trickle out.

  Steve looked around through blurred vision and found a dark figure hunched over at his foot. His heart raced as he tried to make out what was happening. He looked around for Matt and Tara. Matt was still soundly sleeping on his pack. Tara was nowhere. The pain began to fade. Death felt certain as the shadowy figure released its grip on his leg and crawled up his body. Fear consumed him as his body’s fight-or-flight mode short-circuited his brain, preventing him from thinking like the rational operator he was.

  “Hey, quiet down. You’re gonna bring them in here,” Tara said as she backed away from Steve.

  Her voice made him quickly realize he had been dreaming when Tara had woken him up. He hated dreams. He must have been screaming or something. The blood he’d felt dripping down his leg was sweat. His body was covered in it.

  “Them? What ‘them’?” he whispered.

  “The roamers outside. Only a few, but still, you’re being loud. So, shh.” Her bark was quiet but demanding.

  Outside, the low groans of the dead could be heard as they wandered by. Their desperate cries of hunger penetrated the night air. A sound as familiar as wolves that howled at the moon.

  Steve stood up and watched as Tara put a finger over her mouth before she slowly crawled back to the window frame where she had been standing guard earlier. Her long rifle was sitting upright against the wall. He passed by Tara to get a look out the window. As he positioned himself, he knocked over her .308 rifle. She reached for it in an attempt to stop it from falling. But her finger slipped through the trigger guard and smashed down on the trigger, accidentally releasing a single shot.

  The sound of the gun going off caused Matt to jolt from his sleep with wide eyes. His face screwed up with a look of both anger and confusion.

  “The fuck,” he barked.

  Tara closed her eyes tight as the low groans turned to howls of excitement and the soft shuffling of limp feet hardened into a rapid, rage-fueled assault.

  “Fuck,” Steve muttered.

  He looked out the window and saw the familiar faces of those who had died in the recent Camp Oliver attack. He had hoped it was only a group of withered, but these were ragers. These were his friends, and they were coming for them all.

  3

  Broken Silence

  The rifle report had sent the ragers into a panic. Hellish screams slashed through the air and tore through the silent wake that followed.

  When she opened her eyes a mere split second after the round escaped, Tara found the darkness of the night to be far colder than the mountain summer air should have been. Matt and Steve were nothing more than shadows in the distance. She was isolated in her moment of failure. Then, within a single blink, the wall behind her shook violently as the mass of dead on the other side slammed with all their strength into the exterior wall. Dust and debris fell from the cracks and seams. The plywood barrier popped and cracked under pressure, threatening to fall apart. All they could do was hold tight and hope the dead didn’t sniff them out.

  Tara sat against the wall with her head under the porthole in the window. She could smell the death on their bodies as they passed by inches away. She could feel their cold, lifeless bodies scrape against the wall. A single hand slipped through the hole and groped at the void above her head. A torn nail dangled from a blueish-grey fingertip and caught itself on her ponytail. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe as it scraped and caressed her hair. The nail snagged on Tara’s hair tie as it pulled away and yanked free of the finger.

  She closed her eyes so tight it hurt, and she wished it would all just go away. But wishes didn’t work in this world.

 
Wood splintered and crashed as the interior screen door slammed open and collapsed onto Tara’s body. A small, ghost-like figure darted past her as she collected herself. A bright flash appeared out of the darkness, then a loud boom followed by a thud.

  “Contact, front door,” Steve called out. “They’re inside.”

  Two more figures ran through the opening and sprinted toward Steve and Matt.

  “Move, move, move,” a voice bellowed out.

  It might have been Steve, could have been Matt. Tara couldn’t tell. Noises were muffled, distant, and foreign-sounding. Her vision narrowed and blurred around the edges. Never before had she allowed the stress of combat to affect her in such a way. She needed to snap out of it, or she would die.

  Matt and Steve continued to engage body after body as the dead flooded in. Round after round fired. Flash after flash turned the place into an orgy of death and mayhem. With each burst, a quick silhouette of the man behind the carnage appeared. A blip of their faces, then back to darkness.

  They had warned her before she volunteered to join them. They told her combat stress was real and could strike anyone at any time and when you least expected it. She’d ignored them. She had thought she was above the stress, that it was for the weak. And now… Now she was trapped by her mind, unable to think, unable to act. True paralysis. Fear was the mother of a bitch.

  “Move to the rear,” the same hollow voice called out.

  Only this time, it was farther away. Distant, like a lost child who cried out for his mother.

  Matt and Steve had made their way to the emergency exit in the back. They must have thought she’d moved on their commands to do so. She had to move, or she would die.

  She pushed her body up. It was heavier than she thought it should have been. Then, she realized a small child laid on top of her with the screen door between them. He chomped at her, exposing slivers of intestine from his last kill. His teeth were unable to reach her flesh. His young face was smeared with blood and his breath stank of rotten meat and sewage. The bloodshot whites of his eyes drew her in, entranced her, almost caused her to forget the child was trying to kill her. It wasn’t until the boy screamed that she gathered her sense. Her gun, she thought. She needed her gun. But it was out of reach.

  The boy opened his mouth wide to scream again but wasn’t able to finish. A single shot rang out and the right side of his head exploded. Steve stood over them as the child fell limp. He turned his rifle toward the doorway to provide her with the cover she needed to stand.

  A weak yelp escaped her throat as she pushed the dead thing away. His face—God, his face. That was Spencer. Little Spencer. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the tiny, port wine stain birthmark on his face was clear as day now.

  Spencer’s body rolled to the floor with a dull thud. So lifeless, so dead.

  She grabbed her rifle and looked down at Spencer one last time before she hurried toward the back of the restaurant. A round zipped past her face. She felt the heat of it an inch or two away.

  “Friendly,” she yelled. “Friendly. It’s me, don’t shoot.”

  “Move, goddammit,” Matt barked.

  Tara dropped to the ground inside the small walkway. To her left was a green wall with a broken picture frame. To her right sat the bathroom. She could smell the pungent aroma of ammonia and practically taste the acrid sourness of freshly fired rounds. It wasn’t as strong as being behind the ejection port of the rifle, but goddamn if it wasn’t invigorating in that moment. The smells brought her mind back into focus.

  She saw past Matt as he stood in the doorway with the door propped open on his body. He waited for her with his rifle aimed over her body toward the main entrance. He couldn’t see the rager as it ran at him from behind. She brought her rifle up and fired lying down. The round zipped over Matt’s shoulder an inch away from his head, slamming through the eye socket of the rager with a wet pop. Matt turned as the rager collapsed just a foot away.

  When she stood, Steve was waiting behind her.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They ran for a small parking lot a hundred yards away. It was the only area they had to work with to give themselves time and space between the newly infected and their safety. But it didn’t take long for the ragers to catch their scent and begin their assault.

  Tara heard them approaching from behind. They growled and snarled like rabid dogs. Their teeth clattered and clanked. She had to do something, so she stopped and brought her rifle up.

  Another familiar face ran toward her. It was Natalie. A tall, lean woman who had looked after Tara as a young girl. Now, pale and infected, Natalie ran at her in a feeding frenzy, her mouth open, teeth exposed, awkward and misplaced from years of poor hygiene, yet already colored with bloodstains from the dead.

  Who had she killed after being infected, Tara thought as she pulled the trigger. Her heart sank down into her stomach from her chest as she remembered the woman Natalie had been.

  The round entered Natalie’s skull through her forehead with a loud crack, snapping her head back. There wasn’t any red mist, just black filament that seeped out like sewage from a clogged septic pipe.

  She dropped in place, never to move again.

  Just behind Natalie was her husband Dave. He wore an old, black, button-up work shirt with his name on it. He had always been kind to Tara, so accepting of her like a daughter. Dave and Natalie had lost their own child in the first outbreak. A young girl nearing her fifth birthday and about to start kindergarten. She would have been Tara’s age now.

  Tara wanted to cry as she pulled the trigger, but kept the pain inside. His body dropped at his wife’s feet. Black, tar-like blood seeped out and pooled around their bodies.

  At least they died together.

  The last of the ragers ran toward her. A lone creature whose face was screwed up in anger, and a body that jerked with uncontrolled spasms as he attempted to run Tara down. She hated the world. She hated what humanity had done so many years ago, and here she was, fifteen years later, still paying the cost of her parents’ generation’s poor decisions and obsessions. She let that rage fuel her as she pulled back the trigger to gun down a man who had once been living, but now sought her out as free meal. But her gun had run dry.

  She flipped her rifle to the side, exposing the ejection port. It was open and empty. The bare metal of her magazine’s follower stared back at her, waiting to be relieved of its duty. The frustration of losing count was short-lived; she didn’t have time to be aggravated with herself.

  Refusing to give up, refusing to die right at that moment, Tara clenched her teeth in desperation and grabbed the barrel of her rifle to use the buttstock as a bat. She wheeled it back over her shoulder and swung with every ounce of strength she could muster and cracked the rager in the head. The wooden stock of her rifle connected with a bone-cracking snap that dropped the beast dead.

  She stood in place, her chest heaving up and down as she let go of the stress, let go of the fury, and allowed her mind and body to be at peace with her actions. This was not her fault. This was nothing more than the world they lived in. A reality forced on them as a byproduct of the previous world’s mishaps.

  “Ahh,” she huffed out as she lowered her rifle.

  Tara dropped her empty magazine and searched around for a replacement. The hollow steel magazine hit the asphalt with a loud clang as it bounced.

  “I’m out,” she growled under her breath as she slung her .308 onto her shoulder. “We need to get back to where we left the survivors. Everyone we just killed was part of the group we left a few days ago. That means…they got attacked. While we were gone.”

  “I agree, brother,” Steve added. “This is bad. We might not have anyone to return to.”

  “I didn’t see Greg or Jody, which means some of them survived. I say we head out now and hope I’m right,” Matt said.

  “Do you think they’ll still be there?” Steve asked.

  “It’s possible they moved, but I wouldn’
t be comfortable not checking first. So, the sooner we head out, the sooner we get answers.”

  Tara walked past Matt and headed off toward the temporary shelter they had left the few remaining survivors. She considered the very real possibility she, Steve, and Matt might be the only ones left. She hoped there were others, but the likelihood was low. Greg Holt, the camp’s founder and lead trainer on all things tactical, was the kind of man who always survived no matter how dire the circumstances. However, her hope at the moment had dwindled down to barely any at all. Jody Stout, Greg’s best friend, would be wherever Greg was, which meant if one survived, so had the other. The only thing keeping what little hope she had left alive was the fact neither one of them were part of this group of ragers they’d just killed. There were others she hadn’t seen, but that didn’t mean their bodies weren’t lying out in a field somewhere, rotting away.

  She closed her eyes and thought about all the dead. Usually, a withered attack meant killing some random thing, not killing people you knew and grew up with. Faces with memories and personalities you knew all too well attached to them. In the few months that she had been going out with Matt and Steve, she’d never had to kill one of their own. There were almost always withered to kill. But to kill ragers that were once friends hurt her. She wanted to cry but refused. Instead, she took a deep breath and thought about something Greg had once told her. He had said, “All you can do is embrace the suck. Crying about it won’t change anything.”

  So, that was what she did. She embraced the suck and hoped for the best.

  4