by Jacy Morris
"I got something," Quigs said.
"Alright, Brown, Whiteside, get out there and bring Beacham in here."
"And the civvies?" Brown asked.
"Yeah, them too."
Brown and Whiteside turned and moved back towards the front of the store, purpose in their steps.
"Lead on," Tejada said.
Without having to be told, everyone went into operational mode, and they began to follow the trail of blood. It led through the store, heading deeper into the darkness. Quigs knew what they would find at the end of that trail. It could only be one of two things. It was either going to be a dead Ramirez or a living Ramirez scared out of his mind at the prospect of death. But he was one of their own. They would help him, no matter the situation.
Quigs inched forward, and his friends fanned out beside him as they approached two green double-doors. Two circular windows were set into the swinging doors. The windows shone black, and the blaze of their flashlights reflected back at them. There was a bloody handprint on the left door. A drip of red ran down the green paint.
"No more gunshots," Tejada hissed.
Quigs hated this whole situation. He felt like he was hunting his friend. Ramirez had always been a good dude, a little too religious for Quigs' liking, but that was alright. At least he had something to believe in. What did Quigs believe in? Sleeping in and football? Wasn't much of either going around these days.
He stepped through the left double-door, and Day pushed through on the right. They pressed the doors to the wall, holding them there and waving their flashlights around the dark interior of the grocery store's storage area. He could hear the buzz of flies. Fruit, long gone bad, sat molding and rotting in wooden crates piled high with the stuff. The smell was sickeningly sweet. He saw nothing, no movement. Then he spied some blood on a wooden crate. He highlighted it with his flashlight, and Day tapped him on the shoulder to let him know he saw it as well.
The other soldiers moved into the space, and more beams of light lit the interior. There was a bang from somewhere, like the sound of a boot hitting metal. Then there was a rattling as a sliding metal door was lifted upwards. Blinding daylight filled the space, and they all saw Ramirez roll under the door and into the sunshine. Then he disappeared as the door crashed closed behind him.
The soldiers rushed forward, Day and Quigs flinging the door upwards, blinding light pouring into the storage area. As the door rumbled open, they saw the back of Ramirez in full flight, his dripping blood dotting the back alley of the grocery store.
"Want me to?" Allen asked Tejada, raising his rifle and sighting down its length.
"No, he made his choice," Tejada said. "He wants to walk with the dead, we'll let him. He's not ready yet."
Quigs wondered what had come over Ramirez, but then he saw something that shook him more than it should have. On the ground there was a small bible. Something stuffed inside glinted in the daylight. After they lowered the door, Quigs went over to the bible and picked it up. Inside was Ramirez's crucifix still attached to the gold chain.
"Fuck," Quigs murmured.
Tejada, all business, as if nothing had happened, said, "Alright, lets grab some food, and get back here on the double. I got a feeling more of the dead are coming our way. I want to get some food, get those civvies in here, and barricade the shit out of this place. We get trapped, we got a nice back door here."
No one moved. "Come on! Make it happen, people," Tejada exhorted. The soldiers, knowing that food was at a premium, moved into the grocery store dutifully, grabbing whatever caught their fancy. Instinctively, they stayed away from the meat and dairy part of the store. No one wanted to see or smell what happened to hundreds of pounds of spoiled dairy and meat.
When they were done, they bundled up their wares and returned to the back of the store. They began piling box after box of canned food in front of the double doors, but none of the dead were coming. They all knew that.
Beacham had already related the tale of Ramirez running past them like his ass was on fire. The wounded soldier had sprinted past Beacham and the others without saying a word, a haunted look on his face. The dead, already converging on the grocery store due to the gunfire, locked in on Ramirez as he streaked past them. Beacham, Rudy, Amanda, and Andy had taken the opportunity to get into the shadows of the grocery store. They watched silently as the crowd of gathering Annies turned to follow Ramirez.
Quigs liked to think that Ramirez had planned the whole thing. He liked to think that he was giving them a better chance at surviving by drawing off the Annies, so they wouldn't have to fight their way out of the grocery store. But another part of Quigs thought that maybe Ramirez's mind had just snapped. Maybe he had gotten bitten, and the only thing he could do was run, foolishly thinking that maybe he could outrun the virus that was coursing through his veins.
With a pack of batteries at his feet, Quigs ripped open a Whatchamacallit candy bar. It was sweet and chewy... but he wasn't in the mood. He choked it down, his mind elsewhere. Periodically, Quigs' hand would go to the small bible tucked away in his shirt pocket. Maybe he had meant to draw them away. Nah.
****
Private Sergio Ramirez had always been a fan of running. On base, you could find him jogging the perimeter in his spare hours. He loved the feeling that came with getting into a solid stride, that moment of unconscious effort where his legs just seemed to move on their own, and his mind went elsewhere. Even in the desert, with the heat hitting dangerous levels, he would make time to get into that zone. His life, once he had been deployed overseas, had been one of constant fear. His first month there, any time he heard a noise, he would duck and cover his head.
The other soldiers ribbed him constantly because of this, but he knew that they had all gone through the same thing. Still, walking around the base, Sergio had the constant fear that at any moment he could just end. Before he even heard the sound, his head could be turned into hamburger by a random sniper round. It had happened before to other unlucky soldiers, rarely, but it had happened.
Jogging had been his escape from the threat of death. He would change into a raggedy old T-shirt and some army shorts that were a little too short to go without remark from his fellow soldiers, but he didn't care. He would start out at a gentle lope just to work the kinks out. Around and around he would go with the sun beating down on him. He would chew up mile after mile in his jogging shoes, stepping lightly over the sandy sections and picking his way through the rocky areas. He would do this until his mind went away, until it disappeared completely and he stopped existing. Running allowed him to escape.
In the grocery store, an Annie had popped around the corner, and he had swung at it with his rifle. He missed its head and was forced to retreat backwards, struggling to keep his flashlight trained on its gruesome face, only to trip over cans of food spilled haphazardly on the ground.
He had gone down to the ground, a prayer on his lips. He was able to get to his knees when the Annie pounced on him. With no room to swing his rifle, he fought with every ounce of his strength to push the creature off of him, using the rifle for leverage. The smell of the dead thing made his eyes water, and his breath quickly became ragged as he started to panic. Ramirez and the Annie danced in the aisle, and he had barely enough strength to call for help. The Annie shoved him backwards, pinning him between the shelf on his left, his rifle stuck uselessly between his body and his assailant.
He could see nothing. The flashlight was shining downwards, and in his mind, he imagined the dead thing's face taking a bite out of his throat. The Annie pushed him further backwards, and the shelf tipped, falling over with a loud crash.
On the other side of the shelf, he heard someone scream, but he couldn't place the voice. Was that Quigs? Or was it him, screaming his own death knell? He slid downwards, pushing the Annie off of him trying to feel for its shoulders so that he didn't wind up placing his fingers in the damned thing's mouth.
The cold skin of its stomach pressed against his fa
ce, and then it dropped to the ground with him. Its teeth clacked together in an effort to bite him. Ramirez tried to roll out from underneath it, and it lost its grip momentarily. As he rose upwards, visions of escape danced in his head. He would just sprint over to the nearest beam of light, and everything would be alright.
But as he rose from a sitting to a standing position, he met resistance, right at the moment he was halfway between sitting and standing. The Annie had a hold of the strap of his rifle, and he fell backwards. He involuntarily put his hand out to break his fall, but it didn't touch the floor. It touched something cold and hard, and then there was pain. He pulled with all his might, but he couldn't free his fingers... and then they were free... no, they weren't free. They were gone. With his elbow, he bashed repeatedly on the Annie's skull. Hot blood splashed from his missing fingers onto his face, and he bit his lower lip to prevent himself from screaming.
He was a dead man now. He might as well be an Annie as far as the others were concerned. He had seen how this all went down. When the Annie stopped moving, he picked up his rifle and headed for the back of the building, hoping that there was some means of escape.
He staggered up the aisle, kicking food out of the way. None of it was any good to him now. Death was here, and it was coursing through his veins. He tried to pray, but the words wouldn't come. They were locked away, blocked off by the devil's virus. He would be one of them. No one else had survived a bite, and he knew that he wasn't anything special.
Double-doors loomed ahead of him, and he pushed through, shining his flashlight left and right, swatting the buzzing flies and the stink of rotted fruit away from his face with his good hand. At the far end of the storage area, he saw the rolling metal doors of the loading dock. That was his way out. Behind him, he could hear people shouting. A gunshot boomed through the grocery store, and he knew they would come looking for him. He also knew that they would put a bullet in him.
The one he feared the most was Tejada. He was the most practical son of a bitch that he had ever met. He was the type of dude that would cut a kid's dog in half so they would stop arguing over it. In this case, he was the dog.
Though he feared the man, he loved him as well. Tejada had kept them safe, all of them, over the preceding weeks. He had prevented them from doing stupid things; he had given them a sense of order, but he couldn't let the man kill him. It would weigh on him. No, he owed Tejada more than the occasional nightmare of his death. He owed everyone of those men in there more than that.
They weren't going to see him die. They weren't going to see none of that bullshit. He would go out doing something he loved... running. And if he helped his friends in the process, well, that was even better. Besides, waiting for the bullet, that might be considered suicide in God's book. If there was a heaven, he planned on being there. If this was God's plan for him, then so be it. He would see it through to the end. He pulled his rifle over his head, then his crucifix. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small dog-eared bible. In this, he stuffed his necklace, in the hopes that someone would pick it up and carry it with them, and maybe, just maybe, save themselves.
He squatted down and lifted the rolling door just as he saw beams of light shining around the storage area. He lifted the door, ignoring the pain in the severed fingers of his left hand. Once he had lifted it high enough, he rolled into the daylight, dropped off the edge of the loading dock, and hit the ground running. His feet felt heavy, and the blood from his hand jetted out as he ran.
The sun had never been so beautiful. It splashed off the dusty pavement, and he let loose with his stride, not bothering to wait until he was warmed up. He ran with crossed fingers on his good hand. He heard them yell, but he didn't stop, and there was no gunshot. He rounded the corner, juking to the side, out of the arms of a random Annie. He sprinted up the side of the building, noticing nothing but the freedom of his pumping legs and the beauty of the day.
At the front of the grocery store, he zipped past Beacham and the others. He felt them turn and watch him. Already, the dead were gathering around the grocery store.
"Come on, you fuckers! Come and get some!" he yelled. He almost laughed as they turned and looked at him like a drunk affronted in a bar. They would follow. He had gotten their attention. He waved his bloody hand in the air so that the dead could see he was alive and well, and then he ran in earnest.
The wind rushed through his hair, and it were as if this was his first run ever. He had forgotten what it felt like to have your hair blowing behind you as you ran. Overseas, he had always kept it short, spiky. But it had grown some over the last few weeks. Some of the men kept their shit neat with scissors, but Ramirez had let his grow unchecked. He was glad now.
As his feet pounded the pavement, he disappeared into his mind, freed from the stress of knowing he was going to die. All that existed was the road. He weaved in and out of the dead and back towards the city. It was an uphill climb, but he didn't care. Sweat dripped from his head, and he ripped his shirt off as he ran, letting the sun kiss him one last time.
He let loose with a primal yell, and his lungs, though they burned, fed him with great bursts of oxygen that flooded his body. He felt high. He felt good. He could run like that forever, and that's just what he intended to do. He thanked God for his time on the earth, and he pressed forward, digging into his run, ignoring the ache in his quads from pushing up the hill. It was a great day for a run.
Chapter 6: Old Friends
The road before them was blocked off completely. As Highway 26 veered off and up, it disappeared around a bend. On the left side of the highway, there was a sheer drop off. To the right, the scar of a mountain sat. The scar had been made when the road had been blasted through the side of the mountain, exposing red clay and spurs of rock older than anything man knew. On the road itself, the smoke-stained ruins of a semi-truck sat sideways, blocking off any chance of making it through to the other side.
The survivors sat looking at the ruined truck, cursing the dumb soul that was responsible for causing the roadblock. They had been forced to hike a mile up the damn hill once they had run into the traffic snarl.
They had hoofed it past row after row of abandoned cars, their packs heavy on their backs. In some vehicles the dead rotted, their cars and trucks turned into their tombs. Mort walked faster past these, lest one of the dead punch through a car window and escape, only to appear behind him when he least expected it. The others felt much the same way. Whenever they passed one of these tombs, he could see them pick up the pace as well. It was illogical he supposed. If they could have escaped, they probably would have done so by now.
Others had been this way. They were sure of that. At the beginning of the traffic snarl, they had seen cars with little to no dust on the windows, the keys still sitting in the ignition, the insides stripped bare of anything that they could use to survive. But whoever those mythical survivors were, there was no sign of them now. They were gone, and Mort, Claire, Joan, Lou, and Katie were the only living people in the entire world as far as they could see.
How long that would remain was anybody's guess, but Mort still hoped to live for a couple of months at least. Anything longer would be setting himself up for failure.
"Looks like the only way through is over that tanker," Lou said.
Mort didn't like it, but there really was no other choice. The semi-truck had clearly been heading west when it had jackknifed. The rear wheels hung precariously over the edge of the drop-off, the guard rail turned into a dusty blue, metal ribbon that floated in mid-air. Underneath the tanker, a line of cars sat smashed. The driver had lost control of his truck, and the trailer had swerved into the oncoming lane, crushing the tops of a line of cars.
At some point, a fire had begun. The tires on the semi-had exploded from the heat, and now the whole damn mess sat low to the ground. They had already tried the doors to the cab, but they were fused shut from the fire, and the front of the semi had been buried underneath a jagged rockslide.
Whether the rockslide was a result of the exploding tanker or simply an occurrence of nature, none of them knew, but Lou was right. Up and over was their only option.
The cab would be infinitely easier to climb over than the jagged metal of the exploded tanker. Lou went first, scrambling up over the top. They waited patiently as he lay low on the roof of the semi to look at the road before them. Mort found his patience waning as he stared at the bottom of Lou's well-worn boots. Then Lou spun around, his eyes large, and he put his finger to his lips.
Whatever it was that he saw, it had him spooked... and wanting them to be quiet. Mort knew what that meant. More dead, more fighting. He nodded at Lou, and then shared his own wide-eyed looks with the others. Lou turned around and helped the women up, one by one. It was an awkward climb with everything they owned on their backs, not to mention the rifles that they had scavenged. No one was in the mood to lay down their gear. It was too great a risk. Situations changed so quickly in the new world that it was only prudent to lay down your stuff when you were sure that you were safe, and out in the open, they were never safe.
He had grown to hate his own rifle. The skin at his neck was sore from where the strap constantly rubbed against it, but he would take that chafing if it meant that he wouldn't be eaten alive. He reached up and scratched his itchy beard. It had been bothering him for the last week, but scissors had been low on their priorities. The damn thing itched, and it itched bad. A beard was a great thing in winter, but it was still the tail end of summer. The heat was still there, and he found his beard wet and itchy for most of the days, except when they had ridden in the car, the cool A.C. blasting over them. That had been heaven.
But they knew there was more heaven on the way, something even better than air conditioning. There was a place out there where they could put their backs to the wall and live how they wanted to, without fear of being overrun by the dead in the middle of the night. With each mile there were less of them, and that was a good thing. It was getting so that maybe one day he could just sit back and relax. Maybe he will have found some scissors by then.