by A. J. Brown
I took another long swallow of water, almost finishing off the bottle. Hetch said nothing.
“My brother, Jake… He took my wife and son and several other family members, and they went to this cabin we had in Table Rock. When I got there, they were all dead except for Jake and Bobby. Bobby’s my son. Jake left a letter for me on the door, saying he was heading to the Batesburg armory. I went there not long ago. It was overrun with biters.
“But the town…when I got to the town, I didn’t see the first person, dead or alive, at least not at first. It was a ghost town, Hetch. Just the souls of the dead crying out for peace.”
I finished the water off and set the bottle on the counter.
Still, Hetch said nothing.
“I set fire to several buildings, and I watched as the dead burned and collapsed and died, and I mean really died.
“I watched it until half a dozen buildings were engulfed in flames. The sound of the fire was like the rushing waters of a waterfall.”
I licked my lips. I was still thirsty, but I wasn’t going to get another bottle—it had to last longer than a couple minutes.
“As I sat in the van watching the town burn, I had this feeling…this feeling that Jake and Bobby were in that building, just as dead as the other biters, bumbling around, hungry, and on fire.”
“Hank, listen,” he started.
“Where’s your family?” I asked, cutting off whatever sympathetic bull crap he was going to say.
“I’m it, Hank.”
“You’re it?”
“Yeah. I never married, and I don’t have any kids that I’m aware of.” He paused as if pondering whether or not this statement was true. “And if I did have one, well, it’s probably best I didn’t know.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, probably a good thing.”
“Do you really think your brother and son were in that building?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know for sure—I never saw them, after all—but the odds were good if they made it there, then they are as good as dead.
“If you’re not sure, then how can you say for certain they were?”
“I just feel it in my bones. That’s all.”
“In your bones?”
“Yeah, like a gut feeling, you know?”
He nodded.
It was time to change the subject, and I knew very little of the stranger standing fifteen feet away from me.
“Where are you from?”
“Charleston,” he said.
“Big city. Lots of people. How many biters?”
“Too many. When things started going down, things went bad in a hurry. That place is so compact in certain areas—not a lot of folks stood a chance. Those that didn’t get sick were pretty much done in by their dead loved ones. It was bad.”
“How’d you make it out?”
Hetch gave me a sad smile and looked down at his own bottle of water as if it was a beer and there were answers to be found at the bottom of it.
“I got lucky,” he said and took a swig. “My buddy, Dean, and I went fishing down at Wateree, you know, a weekend thing. We left that Thursday just before things went bad. By the time we started back…well, there was no going back.”
“Where’s your friend now?”
“I told you, remember? I left him in a house a couple blocks away. That’s why I was running away from all those biters.”
“That’s right. He was bitten. And you said you put him down, right?”
“Yeah. Well, I think.”
“You think?”
He nodded uncertainly.
I chewed on that for a while.
It would be another few days before Hetch was at full strength. In that time, we talked a lot—more than I would have liked before. But in that world, I guess humanity didn’t just lie in a living person but in their lives before the world died.
When he was better, we went on our first foraging trip.
“Where are we going?”
“I figure Prosperity or Newberry—one of them are bound to have some food or water. Maybe even some gas.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
Why start lying then?
We loaded the van with guns and ammo and some food, but not a lot—enough for a bite to eat while we were out.
I stared at Hetch when he got in the passenger’s side of the van. He wasn’t Humphrey, and it felt like a gut punch when he sat down.
“What?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just…just a memory.”
“What of?”
I thought about it for a moment. How do you explain this to somebody?
Oh, a teddy bear used to sit there, back before you came around. We had nice conversations and killed a lot of biters together, but she’s gone—yeah, she. Her name was Humphrey and…yeah, I know that’s a boy’s name, but that’s what she said to call her. Yeah, she said to call her that. Yeah, she talked to me. What? I’m crazy? Really?
I shook my head. “An old friend.”
I turned the key. The van’s engine rumbled to life, and I put it in gear. Half an hour later, we passed a Wal-Mart close to downtown Newberry. The college was just down the street. I thought about pulling in, checking out some of the dorms, but what good would that do? Most college kids didn’t have all that much money, and Ramen noodles and beer were gourmet dishes for the higher educated.
Instead, I turned around and drove into the parking lot of the Wal-Mart. The dead were plenty here. I wondered if there were other people holed up inside. With that many biters, there had to be some sort of living meal there, right?
I drove close to the building, and the biters turned toward us. They followed the van as we circled toward the front of the store.
“There’s too many,” I said.
“Do you think there are still supplies in there?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not worth finding out—not right now.”
We drove off, the dead following us the best they could. There was a CVS not too far away, but there were plenty of biters there as well. Unlike Batesburg where the ghosts were plenty and the biters were nonexistent at first, Newberry was overrun with them.
“This whole place is a dead zone.”
“Are we just going to turn back?”
I nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
We made our way back the way we came, passing the Wal-Mart on the right.
“Hey,” Hetch said. “What if they were distracted?”
“What if they were?”
“One of us can distract them. The other one, well, maybe the other one could get inside and look around, maybe find supplies.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“Turn around. Go back to Wal-Mart, and I’ll show you.”
I thought he was nuts, but we needed supplies. I did a U-turn. I pulled up along the front of the parking lot but didn’t pull in. The dead—there were so many of them. One wrong move and we were both on the menu.
Hetch pointed. “Over there.”
I looked at the small store in the same parking lot as the Wal-Mart. It was yellow and white and made of brick and mortar and glass. In front of it was a propane tank.
“Do you see it?”
“The propane?”
“Yup.”
“What about it?”
“One shot to the center of it and BOOM! that building goes up like a bomb went off. The noise will attract the biters to the building, and we can make a run for supplies.”
I thought about it for a moment. It was worth a shot.
“How good is your aim?”
He frowned. “Eh…not all that great.”
“Even with a rifle?”
“I’m not that great of a shot—you would just be wasting your ammo if I did it.”
“Can you drive?”
This time, his expression was less of a frown and more of a silly, I deserved that grin.
“I’m pretty sure I can stil
l do that.”
We traded places. He pulled the van into the parking lot. The dead began to converge on us. I grabbed a rifle from the back and settled it on the edge of the door.
“A little closer,” I said, fully aware the biters were approaching quicker than I wanted them to.
“Take the shot.”
“Get a little closer.”
He eased the van forward, taking us toward the ever-growing horde.
“That’s good.”
He put on the brakes, and I steadied the rifle. The window was completely down, and the dead grew closer by the second.
“Take the shot.”
“I will.”
Another few seconds passed, and I could hear them. Their moans were deafeningly loud.
I pulled the trigger.
Bullseye.
And the tank didn’t explode. There was no big boom and a roaring fire to accompany it. Instead, a cloud of white vapor erupted from it and spilled around the tank about twenty or so feet. But it did draw some of the biters away. Just not enough of them.
I pulled the rifle back into the van and put the window up.
“Get out of here,” I said.
“We can still do it.”
“Get out of here.”
“Hank, listen—”
“No. You listen—get us out of here!”
By then, the first of the horde was on us, their hands smacking the sides of the van, the hood, the windows.
“Yeah, okay, getting us out of here.”
He put the van in reverse and mashed the gas. There were thumps and bumps as he crushed several biters along the way. Back on the street, he started to speed away and then stopped.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“They’re following us.”
“Not if you go. We’ll be long gone before they can walk a hundred yards.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I mean, they are following us away from Wal-Mart.”
“Yeah. I get it. Let’s get out of here.”
Hetch rolled his eyes. He actually rolled them. I wanted to lean over and punch him in the head, but he was behind the wheel, and I didn’t think that would be too bright. Then he explained.
“You don’t get it, Hank. If they follow us away from the store, we can get inside easier. The less of them that are near the front of the building, the better chance we have.”
“Is this anything like your exploding propane tank trick?”
“I thought it would work. It did in one of those James Bond movies. Bond just pointed his gun and fired, and the tank blew up all the bad guys.”
“You saw it in a movie?”
“Yeah.”
The thump on the front window brought us from our discussion. Again, Hetch backed the van up, this time along the road. The dead followed him, their bodies rotting and their moans much like an angry mob’s yells.
“Did you see that in a movie too?”
He laughed, which is more than I could do.
“No. It’s a diversion, a tactic used all the time. Kind of like when some women I used to know wanted the boss to notice them, they dressed a little differently, more seductively. It always distracted the men—all of us—and pissed off the other girls in the office. For a while, though, the distraction worked in getting those women what they wanted.”
“Does that mean you’re a woman and you’re going to use your wares to distract them?” I pointed at the steadily progressing horde.
“No—you’re going to distract them.”
“I am?”
Again, he laughed.
“You’re going to go right up to the store. I’m going to hop out, and you are going to drive off—slowly. This will lead them away from me. Shoot a couple of them. If noise is as much of a distraction as movement, then that could draw a few more of them away as well.”
I understood his thinking, but I wasn’t too keen on it right then. This was his first time out in the world since almost dying. What if he wasn’t ready? It was like pushing your kid on a bike and letting go before he had his feet peddling. The kid was usually ready, but the parent never was.
“I don’t know about this. It’s too risky.”
“We need more than what you brought back, and unless wherever you got it from still has more, do you have any better suggestions?”
Wherever I got it from? It did have more before I burned the place down. I was certain of that. But I wouldn’t tell him. No. That secret was mine.
“Fine, but I’m only giving you a few minutes in there. You look around. If it appears too dangerous, get out of there. You got it?”
“Got it, boss.”
He gave a cheesy salute and then sped up, pulling away from the dead as they gave chase. Fifty yards away, if that, he slammed on the breaks. The tires barked on the blacktop.
“Trade places,” he said, opened his door, and got out.
I rounded the van and got in the driver’s side.
“Now, turn around and go back.”
The road was a four-lane. It was easy enough to make a U-turn. When I did, I saw the biters. There were so many more than I expected. They marched toward us, a shambling mass of rotting limbs. I cracked the window enough to hear the chorus line of moans and groans, the sounds of pleading coming from the souls trapped inside.
“Walker, go.”
I don’t know why I listened to him, but I eased off the break and pressed onto the gas. The van picked up speed, and I swerved off the road to keep from hitting them. We passed them on my right. There must have been hundreds of them.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said, my nerves tingling and my stomach fluttering with millions of butterfly wings.
“It’s worth a shot.”
“Not if one of us—or both of us—gets killed.”
Hetch said nothing, which was probably a good thing. He had to be thinking the same thing. But he was willing to take the risk, take a chance that we may not survive so that we may, well, have a chance to survive. I still wasn’t so keen on the idea, but I also wasn’t the one who had almost died because of a bite from one of those things.
I inhaled a deep breath and mashed the gas harder.
We reached the parking lot, and I swerved in, striking a biter and knocking her over in the process. She landed hard against the sidewalk, her head splitting open. There were still plenty of them swarming the place, but we had a clear path to the front of the building. I floored it, reaching the doors in seconds.
”Take this,” I said and handed him my pistol.
He glanced at the gun, hesitant to take it, I guess.
“Hetch, take the gun.”
Finally, he took it, though I’m still not too sure he wanted to, and then he got out of the van and hurried to the doors. I watched him run, feeling like the dad dropping his kid off for his first day of school. I suddenly felt very lost and alone inside. My stomach knotted, and sweat began to bead along my forehead. The van felt stuffy and small and confining.
Hetch had to shove one of the doors open, but then he was gone. I sat there for a few seconds more, hoping he would come back having decided he wasn’t quite ready for school yet. Then the dead began to beat on the back of the van. I drove off and back into the street but much slower than before.
On the road, I led as many of them away from the parking lot as I could. In the rearview, I could see a couple hundred biters straggling behind the van.
“This is taking too long,” I said to no one. “I need to get back.” With that, I did another U-turn, but the dead walked the width of the road. There was no plowing through that many biters. A moment of nervous tension welled up in my chest. I would never make it around that mass. We were going to die there, me inside the van and Hetch somewhere in Wal-Mart.
But there was a break in the bodies along the edge of the road. I turned the van toward that gap and then eased onto the shoulder. I gave the van enough gas to keep from bogging down in the grass. I hit several of the biters but not eno
ugh to slow me down. When I was able to get back on the road, I realized I had gone a lot further from Wal-Mart than I had intended.
Back in the parking lot, I pulled up where I had left Hetch. I started to get out, to run inside and see if I could find him. But if the biters came back, we would both be stuck. As it was, we still had a fighting chance. There weren’t as many biters still in the parking lot, and the few that were there, I could easily take down with a machete or the front end of the van.
A minute passed. Then another. My chest tightened. My mouth became dry. Four minutes passed, and I was on edge, looking in the mirrors and checking the front of the store. I began to sweat not because I was hot but because I was worried. In the fifth minute, the dead began to make their way back to the parking lot. I started to get out of the van.
There was no need to.
Hetch pushed a door open. He pulled a buggy full with all sorts of things and then went back inside. One of the biters started for the door. I got out of the van and pulled the machete free. Hetch shoved the door open a second time, pulling with him another cart.
The biter, a grizzled-looking old guy with wisps of gray hair on his head, shuffled forward. He was close enough to Hetch to get a good chomp down on him. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He stopped and turned away. He came toward me, his eyes a horrible white, his bottom lip torn free, exposing black gums and gray teeth. His nose was nothing more than flat skin. I brought the machete across his head, where it sank into the side of his skull. I pulled the blade free as the old man dropped to the ground.
“Come on,” I yelled and rounded the van. I pulled open the side door. By then, Hetch was there with the first buggy. I unloaded it quickly as he ran back for the other. It rattled on the concrete, one wheel spinning and bumping along.
I looked back. The biters were getting closer.
“We have to hurry,” I yelled and slung bag after bag after bag into the van.
We shoved the carts away and hopped in. The dead converged on us. They slapped at the windows and the doors and the sides and back of the van. It was like a sea of dead, and we were stuck in the middle of it, drowning as the waves tossed us about.
“What are we going to do?” Hetch asked. His eyes were wide and wild. He was breathing hard, and I thought he would hyperventilate where he sat.
“We have to get rid of some of them.”